Confederate Spies in Kentucky

On March 12th, 2012 near Mentor KY in Campbell County, while geocaching I ran into something I never see in SW Ohio, the grave of a Confederate Officer.

Confederate officer Lt. Thomas Jefferson McGraw was arrested by Union troops as a spy for actively recruiting men in KY for the Confederate Army. He was taken to Cincinnati on April 23, 1863, tried and found guilty. He expected to be taken as POW but was instead sent to Johnsons Island on Lake Erie for execution on May 15th, 1863. Abraham Lincoln himself rejected a family plea for a pardon. McGraw was blindfolded and sat on the edge of his coffin so that the gunfire would push him back into the coffin for easy disposal. McGraw's body was then returned and buried at Flagg Spring Cemetery in Kentucky.
The monument here was placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1914.



sources:
- FindaGrave.com
- KnowSouthernHistory.com

Exploring Almost Forgotten Gravesites in Ohio

Cemeteries are a big part of history and I find myself in them frequently while geocaching.
You can learn much from reading the stones from at various eras in American history and get a good idea of what people thought was important to remember. It's also interesting to see trends such as different types of materials and styles of gravestones.
Sometimes I just stop at those little roadside cemeteries and have a look around. Many times places such as this are literally falling apart and quite neglected since ownership is in dispute. Sadly, sometimes it is due to vandalism.
Please have a look at a fine website dedicated to cemetery preservation in the state of Ohio by Linda Jean Limes Ellis.

http://www.limesstones.blogspot.com/

Fortune Cookie Wisdom for Gehio

The perfect fortune cookie for an amateur field historian and geocacher! Maybe I should head to Orient OH?

Sidenote: at the bottom, I figured it was a typo and "kye" was "bye" or something but according to Google, yan-jiang means "magma" while "kye" is the plural of an archaic Scottish word for cows or cattle.