John Bush Forage Master

John Bush

Forage Master John Bush 10^th KY Cavalry

John Bush felt the call to fight for the Confederate States of America and so joined the 10^th Kentucky Cavalry Regiment as Forage Master.  He was with his regiment and Brig Gen. John Hunt  Morgan,  at Cynthiana, KY, June 11-13^th 1864.  The Confederates first surrounded the town held by Union forces, and drove Col. Conrad Garis and the 168^th Ohio Inf. back north.  As the fighting flared in Cynthiana  the 171st Ohio National Guard, commanded by Brig. Gen. Edward Hobson arrived by train, but Morgan and the his forces forced them to surrender.  On June 12^th and 13^th, additional Union forces under Brig. Gen. Stephen Burbridge attacked Morgan, and the Confederates fled into Mt. Sterling, KY.  There 400 of them were captured and many others killed.  Gen. Morgan escaped, but FM John Bush did not.  He and the other prisoners, were placed on a train headed for Camp Douglas Prison in Chicago.  On July 17^th, 1864, the prison-bound train stopped at Thorntown, IN to take on water and FM John Bush attempted to escape.  He was shot and killed with a single shot, and left by the tracks as the train moved onward.  He was buried in an unmarked grave.  No doubt he never heard of the small mid-western town he was killed and buried in.  After the war, a Union soldier, James Ball, a member of Co. D, of the 72nd Indiana Inf., moved to Thorntown.  When he heard the story of John Bush, he bought a military stone out of his own meager earnings and had it engraved and placed on the grave of John Bush.