Battle of Brimstone

The Battle of Brimstone was a small skirmish fought on Brimstone Creek in Scott County on April 1, 1862, early in the American Civil War. It resulted in the first combat fatality of the war in Scott County: a McCreary County, Ky. man named Ambers Strunk who was fighting for the Scott County Home Guard.

Precursor to Battle

On December 28, 1861, 71 men gathered at the Scott County Courthouse in Huntsville and swore an allegiance to the United States, to Scott County, and to each other, forming the Scott County Home Guard.

The formation of the Home Guard was in response to an increase in guerrilla raids and skirmishes early in the war, including a Confederate raid at the Buffalo Creek farm of Hiram Marcum in September 1861, which resulted in severe injuries to his 16-year-old daughter, Julia Marcum. Rebel soldiers would return to Marcum’s farm in January 1862, murdering his nephew, George Marcum.

In his 2001 book, Scott County in the Civil War, historian and newspaper publisher Paul Roy speculated that it may have been at that same December 28 meeting that Scott County Court declared its independence from Tennessee, forming the Free and Independent State of Scott. There’s no evidence to prove that was the case.

Of the 71 men who signed the Home Guard oath that day, the first to do so was a Brimstone Creek farmer named William H. Robbins. He would go on to become the highest-ranking Union officer from Scott County during the war, serving as a captain in the federal army after enlisting in Col. William Clift’s 7th Tennessee at Huntsville.

Robbins was a leader of the Home Guard, helping to alert residents as far away as Morgan and Fentress counties when Confederates and guerrillas were about the countryside. As a result, he became a marked man.

The Battle

On Tuesday, April 1, 1862, a Confederate regiment from Alabama, led by Col. John C. Vaughn, arrived at Brimstone Creek with orders to find and arrest Robbins. His farm was located about where Gib Griffith Road is now located between Slick Rock and Lone Mountain.

Vaughn was a former sheriff from Sweetwater, Tenn. who had raised Tennessee’s first Confederate regiment and had been one of the rebel heroes at the First Battle of Bull Run.

Vaughn’s troops did not find Robbins at home. Robbins was camped on the ridge separating Brimstone Creek from Bull Creek, a strategic maneuver that allowed Home Guard members to be in either Huntsville or Brimstone with short notice. Instead, Vaughn’s men set up a base of operations inside the Robbins home, which was occupied by Robbins’ wife, Lucinda Lewallen Robbins, and their children.

In his book, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, historian H. Clay Smith wrote: “The raiders took everything the lady had to eat and began to make fires and prepare breakfast for themselves. After breakfast, they sent out scouting parties to bring back food or information on the whereabouts of Robbins. This resulted in their staying over for a day or two, so they continued to assemble the loot, in food stuffs and storage, to take back with them together with the body of (Robbins) if found.”

Unbeknownst to the small Confederate regiment, Robbins and other Home Guard members were formulating a plan of attack. During the predawn hours of the following morning, Wednesday, April 2, the Home Guard attacked, flanking the cabin on both sides while also mounting a frontal attack.

The Union version

In his book, Dusty Bits, Smith wrote of a resounding victory for the Home Guard.

“It was still dark, and Vaughn’s men again became confused, keeping on firing on each other until the time they had begun to see daylight, they had dead and wounded all over the mountainside,” Smith wrote.

Smith’s account stated that the Rebels dragged their dead to an abandoned house that was located on the hillside above the main Robbins home, setting it afire to cremate the bodies before gathering their wounded and making an escape.

One member of the Home Guard, Ambers Strunk, was dead. He was the first Civil War soldier from Scott County to be killed in action. His family retrieved his body and buried it near the Tennessee-Kentucky border north of Winfield.

The Home Guard had won the battle, forcing the Confederate regiment to retreat and saving the Robbins home.

The Confederate version

The Confederates told a much different version of the battle. As they told it, the Battle of Brimstone, as it later came to be known, would have been the bloodiest single day of the war for Scott County, with dozens of local men killed or captured.

In a letter to his father, Confederate soldier John Offield — who had written that Scott Countians were more pro-Union than any other community he had traveled through after leaving Virginia — said that there were two Rebels killed and four wounded, while he and his comrades killed 15 Scott Countians and wounded 20 more.

There were only 27 Confederate soldiers present, Offield wrote, compared to about 120 “yanks.”

That story was backed up by an account given by Confederate Lt. Crockett R. Millard, one of the four Rebels who were wounded in the fight. Millard provided an account of the skirmish to the Athens Post, which wrote that the Confederates had four men killed and 11 wounded, one mortally, while the Scott County force had 30 killed and 18 taken prisoner. The newspaper wrote that the Confederates made off with 30 horses, 200 cattle and all the bacon they wanted after winning the fight.

The Athens newspaper quoted the same names of the Confederate dead and wounded as Offield mentioned in his letter to his father.

Still another account came from the Knoxville Register, which stated that four Confederates were killed and 10 were wounded, while “30 to 40 of the jayhawkers were killed” and another 15 to 18 taken prisoner, some of whom were killed during an escape attempt.

The Knoxville newspaper recounted a tale of Col. Vaughn himself narrowly avoiding death after mistakenly riding into a group of the Home Guard, then throwing himself from his horse and down a steep embankment as they leveled their guns on him.

The newspaper’s account stated that there were 150 horses taken from Scott County by the Confederates, along with as much bacon as they were able to carry.

“The victory seems to have been a most complete one and as usual the Federals greatly outnumbered our forces,” the Knoxville Register wrote. “If the reports of this affair are confirmed by the official accounts, the gallant Vaughn has added new laurels to those he achieved at Manases (sic).”

The pro-Confederate newspapers made no mention of the Rebels being in Scott County to search for a Home Guard leader, but instead painted a picture of local “jayhawkers” firing on the soldiers as they traveled along Brimstone Creek.

The Truth

In all likelihood, the truth of the battle’s outcome somewhere in the middle. But with regard to the Home Guard’s losses, Smith’s account was probably much more accurate than the Confederate newspapers in Knoxville and Athens.

It was confirmed that Strunk died in the fight. His mother and other relatives drove a horse and buggy from McCreary County, Kentucky to retrieve his body. He is buried on the Kentucky side of the state line. His headstone reads, “Kiled by the Rebbls in the Brimstone Battle.”

No other Scott County Home Guard members were identified as dead in the fight. It seems extremely unlikely that in a county of 3,500 people, dozens would have been killed or captured without a much more extensive record of the incident.

Furthermore, the newspaper accounts list as many as 150 horses being seized, along with a considerable amount of bacon. It’s unlikely that there would have been anywhere near that number of horses for the Confederates to take. And there almost certainly would not have been a significant amount of bacon on hand. This was an irregular group of untrained volunteers, not a regular army, and they would not have had provisions of those sorts on hand.

While it would not have been surprising for a group of untrained volunteers to be out-battled by Confederate regulars despite having a significant advantage in terms of the number of men engaged in the fight, the newspaper accounts appear to have been Confederate propaganda aimed at destroying pro-Union morale that persisted across East Tennessee.

Likewise, the local accounts of the Confederates’ losses were probably overstated. It seems probable that two Rebel soldiers, Henry Haley and Samuel Jones, were killed, while four others — including Lieutenant Millard — were wounded.

Aftermath

As the Confederates withdrew from Brimstone Creek, they took much of what William and Lucinda Robbins owned — including bed linens they found inside the home, which they used to make horse blankets, according to Smith’s account of the skirmish. 

Vaughn told Lucinda Robbins that he “‘hated’ what had happened to her and her family,” Smith wrote. “She replied, ‘If you do, why are you taking my good bedspreads and other valuables?’”

Lucinda Robbins also told Vaughn that her children were crying for something to eat, which prompted the Confederate colonel to give her back some of the meal and meat that he and his men had taken. She then told him that she didn’t have anything with which to cut the meat, because the soldiers had taken all her silverware. He gave her his personal knife so that she could cut the meat to feed her children.

“Mrs. Robbins gave the knife to a little, 12-year-old Newport girl who had ridden up on her way to the mill to get a ‘turn of meal ground,’” Smith wrote. “Her instructions to the girl were that, if she overtook Capt. Vaughn, she was to return him the knife. But the girl had it taken from her by one of the rear guardsmen; and, all the rest of her life, Mrs. Robbins wondered if the captain ever got his knife back.”

In Smith’s account, Lucinda Robbins spoke of “what a gentleman” Vaughn was for not killing her family and burning her home, “as he did that old house and his own men.”

Three months later, on July 1, 1862, William Robbins enlisted in the Union army at Huntsville and was assigned to the 7th Tennessee. In his will, dated August 27, 1862, stated that he was leaving for the army that same day and feared he would not return — a foreshadowing that turned out to be true. He died of typhoid fever at Lexington, Ky. on April 16, 1863, and was buried at Lexington National Cemetery.

Robbins’ widow, Lucinda, later lived with John Hughett, a long-time justice of the peace from Brimstone Creek.

Read More: A Marked Man: The Battle of Brimstone (Enclave)

Other Civil War skirmishes fought in Scott County:
The Battle of Huntsville
The Battle of No Business
The Battle for the Bacon