My Old Confederate Home

by Rusty Williams

  The wooden legs of the large water tower, now surrounded by flame from the main building, infirmary, and laundry, began to blister and smoke.

  At 7:45 P.M. onlookers heard the far-off clang of a fire bell and a hand-cranked siren. The Louisville fire company—a crew of professional firefighters with state-of-the-art equipment—was passing through Berrytown, still more than a mile from the Home.

  The Louisville fire engines roared at near the pumper's maximum speed toward the Home entrance. Stiffly upright, Captain Stephan sat almost eight feet off the ground in the open cab of the big American LaFrance engine, leading the three-engine caravan.

  Firelight reflected red and gold off the shiny engines as they began to turn into the gate at the bottom of the hill, and a cheer arose from the crowd.

  The crowd went silent in mid-cheer, however, as the giant American LaFrance motor pumper slid sideways off the gravel driveway during its turn, tipped, then rolled over into a drainage ditch, wheels up and spinning.

  Still stunned by the sight of the disabled fire engine, onlookers reacted to Milton Stoess's shouted warning and turned to see the tall water tower, its legs ablaze, crash slowly down onto the infirmary building.

  With no pressure, water coming from the fire hoses slowed to a trickle. Then there was no water at all.

  John Leathers picked his way unsteadily across the charred ground of the Kentucky Confederate Home, stepping over pieces of debris and half-burned belongings as he surveyed the damage.

  It was 10:30 P.M. The moon was up, a thin sliver in the east, and smoldering tree trunks still popped and sizzled like bacon. Moonlight and ash turned the landscape the color of bone as, here and there, wisps of smoke rose from the ground like tiny white hairs on an old man's arm. Some firemen and volunteers hunted for hot spots in the debris; others coiled their hoses and returned their equipment to trucks. It had taken fifty men to right the once-shiny American LaFrance motor pumper and push the two-ton behemoth to the top of the hill; now it was trapped spoke-deep in mud, its red paint scratched and dirtied. A Louisville city work crew would try to dig it out come daylight.11

  Leathers was tired. The hour was late; he was seventy-two years old and had long since lost the snap and dash he'd had to assist veterans like crippled Billy Beasley thirty-five years before. As then, however, he felt responsible for the care of his old comrades, so John Leathers, secretary of the Home's board of trustees and closest available member of the executive committee, had caught the evening electric car for Pewee Valley as soon as he heard news of the fire.

  His first sight of the grounds told the old banker some of the bad news: the Kentucky Confederate Home was effectively destroyed. Of the main building—the elegant old Villa Ridge Inn, built in 1889 as a luxurious getaway for Kentucky's elite—nothing was left but a pile of char. The three-story laundry building, too, had burned to the ground, along with all its equipment. A small boiler house—no great loss, except for the pumps inside—was nothing but a pile of brick. Much of the three-story infirmary was blackened from smoke and soot-stain, and the roof was scorched from falling tree branches, but the greatest damage seemed limited to the north wing. The falling water tank had crushed an area that acted like a firebreak for the endangered hospital, buying enough time for Louisville's arriving hose crew to lay lines and draft water from a nearby pond. Thanks to McFarlan's inmate hose crew, Stoess's chemical pumper, the falling water tower, and the late-arriving Louisville firemen, two wings of the infirmary were relatively unscathed. Only Duke Hall was undamaged—water-soaked, but whole.

  Leathers walked the grounds while Commandant Daughtry cross-checked lists for the names of veterans unaccounted for. Daughtry had formed the healthiest of the inmates into rows and ordered them to sit, cross-legged, on the soggy lawn. The men, some clutching a few salvaged possessions, watched bits of flame flicker through the rubble of what had been their home. Gusts of wind ruffled the singed beards and hair of the old veterans. Charlotte Woodbury had arrived from Louisville sometime during the evening. She and the president of the Confederate Home UDC chapter, Mrs. H. J. Stone, passed among the survivors, offering what comfort they could.

  The Episcopal and Presbyterian churches were sheltering dozens of men; handfuls more were sleeping in private residences. Several inmates had already departed Pewee Valley with relatives who came to take them away, and more relatives had wired their intention to retrieve their kin. Twenty-six of the more feeble men were transported to Louisville's City Hospital in ambulances provided by the commander at Camp Zachary Taylor, and infirmary nurse Mary McAllen sent word to Daughtry that the inmates were resting comfortably.

  By midnight Daughtry had compiled his list of survivors. He checked it twice before reporting to Leathers.

  Not a man was missing. Every inmate was accounted for. No deaths. No serious injuries.

  One hundred eighty old veterans had again beaten the odds in the roulette of war. Now, as during countless marches and on battlefields more than a half-century before, the old soldiers wondered: Where will I sleep tonight? What will I eat? Where will I be tomorrow?

  The next day John Leathers and William A. Milton met newspaper reporters to answer questions about the fire.

  “Gray and Khaki to Share Camp,” the papers reported. Leathers said that insurance would pay to rebuild the Home, and he was attempting to acquire two barracks at Camp Zachary Taylor to house the men temporarily. “The old warriors and their new-found buddies of the First Division will be sharing camp life early next week,” he told reporters.12

  Leathers's announcement was premature on both counts.

  Newspaper reporters interviewing the inmates reported that the old veterans had no desire to live among the young soldiers at Camp Taylor; they were anxious to get back together in Pewee Valley.13

  Within days, Leathers and Milton were forced to backtrack.

  “The men seemed to apprehend they might be subjected to military rule,” Milton said. “While this is not at all likely, the Executive Committee felt the veterans should be kept where they want to remain.”14

  Leathers also discovered that the insurance proceeds would fall $15,000 short of returning the Home to its previous condition. He expressed the belief that persons “devoted to these few remnants of the South's once-proud armies will contribute privately to swell the fund for reconstructing the institution.”15

  The board of trustees met immediately to sort out insurance claims and organize a rebuilding program. It quickly became apparent that no significant private contributions would materialize, and the trustees were forced to use monies from the state's $5,000 monthly allotment to supplement rebuilding costs. Kentucky's UDC chapters pledged to provide new furnishings, but it was obvious to everyone that the new facility would be more institutional and less residential in appearance.16

  Construction continued through the spring and summer, as inmates crowded into undamaged infirmary rooms and took meals under giant mess tents erected on the Home grounds.

  “We have had a few mild cases of sickness during the month,” Commandant Daughtry wrote in July, “probably caused by the heat and eating more new vegetables. Considering the conditions under which we are laboring, I think we are getting along remarkably well.”17

  In October 1920—eighteen years after the Home was dedicated and seven months after the fire that nearly destroyed it—the board of trustees announced that rebuilding was complete. Two wings of the infirmary had been repaired and new laundry and boiler buildings built. A kitchen and dining hall, with dormitory-like rooms above it, replaced the ruins of the old main building. Above the buildings stood a new 10,000-gallon water tank, this time built of steel and iron.18

  No crowds assembled, no bunting was raised, no bands played to mark completion of the rebuilt Home.

  The fire had destroyed something of the essence of the Kentucky Confederate Home, something that the carpenters, masons, plumbers, and painters couldn't rebuild.

  The original building—the old Vi
lla Ridge Inn—had resisted entry into the twentieth century. Its wide verandahs, furnished with comfortable rocking chairs and wooden gliders, spoke of the sociability and leisure of nineteenth-century life. The hand-carved millwork and intricate trim were lost remnants of a time before the age of assembly lines and mass production. The old building had been a living museum of sorts, with a cannon shot marking the dawn, a flag ceremony ending the day, and living relics of America's Civil War on hand to talk about the days of ’61 to ’65.

  The fire had destroyed all that.

  Rebuilt following the fire in a coarse style favorable to the lowest bidder and subject to the same bureaucratic oversight as every other state-run prison or asylum, the Kentucky Confederate Home had, by the 1920s, become a twentieth-century warehouse for nineteenth-century artifacts.

  And some supporters began to question whether the Home should continue to exist at all.

  Chapter 14

  The Reverend and the Rector

  On a day several months before the fire at the Kentucky Confederate Home, the Reverend Dr. Alexander N. White entered the room in which the charges against him were to be read and discussed. Having spent twenty years in his wheelchair, the inmate could maneuver expertly, and he rolled to the edge of the carpet in front of the table where members of the executive committee and his accuser, Commandant Daughtry, sat.

  Daughtry handed a copy of the charges against the inmate to board president William A. Milton, who read them to the gathering. The commandant's rage was palpable in the words he had put to paper.

  “Charges will be preferred against you for the abuse of management on various occasions,” Daughtry had written. “Notably, when you charged that there was graft on the part of the management, which naturally includes the trustees as well as the inmates of the Home.”

  White listened, unconcerned, an expression of righteous grace on his face. As a minister of the Gospel, Reverend White had preached that a soft answer turneth away wrath.

  This day, however, he brought more than a soft answer.

  White asked that two men be admitted to the room. The first was his personal attorney, Judge R. T. Crowe; the other was the commonwealth attorney of Oldham County, there to deliver an order from the County Court enjoining the board of trustees from suspending Dr. White from the Home.1

  That night in his room at the Home, Dr. White slept the sleep of the blameless. He had won the first skirmish of a bitter war of accusations and allegations that would cost public support and threaten the continued existence of the Kentucky Confederate Home.

  Even before the shock of the fire and the stress of reconstruction, Commandant Charles L. Daughtry's behavior was becoming noticeably erratic.

  Daughtry had accepted the job of commandant, expecting it to be the capstone of his career. Instead, he found himself whipsawed daily by the needs of crabby old men, whiny employees, sour exemployees, and a board of trustees intent on involving itself in even the smallest decisions. In 1920 alone, Daughtry wrote a long, rambling letter to the trustees, explaining that he fired an infirmary nurse because she didn't act sufficiently grief-stricken at the death of Bennett Young; he also sent the board a list of inmates who were conspiring against him. Among other things, Daughtry resented the implied criticism of Charlotte Woodbury and her monthly list of “suggestions” from the Women's Advisory Committee. His frustration led him at times to lash out in rage at those around him and to engage in petty persecutions that might cost a veteran his place in the Home or an employee his job.2

  Daughtry's paranoia may have become self-fulfilling; there were plenty of individuals ready to gossip about his actions at the time of the fire.

  Pewee Valley resident Mrs. H. J. Stone watched Daughtry confront longtime Matron Lela Henley on the night of the Home fire. Daughtry was almost gleeful that the loss of the Home would cost Henley her job. “He told her there was no place for her, there was no work for her, no room for her and no money to pay her,” Mrs. Stone reported. (William Milton later assured Mrs. Henley she was still on the payroll, but the upset woman packed up and left town rather than endure more verbal abuse from Daughtry.)3

  A newspaper reporter witnessed Daughtry's breakdown at City Hospital the morning after the fire. The commandant arrived midmorning, looking as if he had slept in his clothes. Seeing the inmates safe in hospital beds and knowing how close they had all come to perishing in the conflagration, Daughtry collapsed in deep, heaving sobs. Several of the decrepit old veterans left their beds to comfort the distraught commandant. It was understandable, perhaps, that an exhausted seventy-four-year-old man might become overly emotional in the aftermath of a near-disaster, but the public nature of his breakdown caused some to question his fitness for the job.4

  The trustees were aware of Daughtry's increasingly mercurial behavior, but they chose to ignore it until rumors reached John Leathers about Daughtry and Imogene Nall, his twenty-one-year-old bookkeeper. In the wake of the fire, Daughtry had taken rooms for the two of them at a guesthouse. Pewee Valley neighbors, having seen the couple together, were saying that the relationship involved more than the business of the Home.

  Milton and Leathers wasted no time convening a private hearing of the executive committee on April 9, 1920.

  “Various rumors have been afloat, in many cases amounting to scandal, which involves the fair name and reputation of the Confederate Home,” Leathers announced. He had asked several interested parties to make themselves available for testimony; they were waiting outside the boardroom.

  “I have no personal knowledge whatever of any of these matters,” Leathers continued. “I cannot conceive anyone … could start charges of this sort through any malicious intent or idle gossip. They must be actuated by good motives.”

  Six witnesses were called before the committee. Most of them described a spiteful commandant out of control, a pattern of petty persecutions and arbitrary withholding of meals and medicines. With their testimony completed, Leathers spoke again.

  “We have not touched on the most important matter we came here to investigate,” he said: “[accusations against] Daughtry of living a double life here at the institution. This is the vital question at issue.”

  None of the witnesses, however, could provide absolute, ironclad, firsthand evidence of impropriety between Daughtry and Nall.

  “I think there are many other reasons why the man is not fitted to be Commandant of the institution, beside the charge that he is guilty of immoral conduct,” one witness said.

  Leathers didn't see it that way; his focus was on Daughtry and Nall, and it was frustrating that no one had a speck of hard evidence.

  “If anyone has a charge to make, now is the time to speak and come up to tell us what you know,” Leathers practically begged the group. “I want to get at the bottom of this.”

  After a grueling afternoon of testimony and discussion, no one could bring honorable evidence, and Leathers was forced to close the hearing, leaving himself and the others in an awkward position. Because there was no direct evidence supporting rumors of Daughtry's impropriety with the young woman who worked for him, the committee would be forced to defend Daughtry against his accusers.5

  It was a position that would become increasingly uncomfortable.

  Too many people were hearing too many stories about Daughtry's behavior toward inmates and employees for the matter to simply disappear.

  During her visits to the Home, Charlotte Woodbury asked inmates about mistreatment. No one would say anything. Finally, an inmate she spent much time with in Pewee Valley called at the Woodbury residence. He spent the afternoon describing Daughtry's tyrannical actions.

  “Why did you never tell me?” Woodbury asked the man. At that, Woodbury said, “He turned away and shook his head and his eyes filled with tears and said, ‘I was afraid I'd lose my Home.’”

  “I will see that this thing is sifted to the bottom,” she promised.

  Mrs. H. J. Stone was president of the reactivated Confederate Home
chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and she visited the Home daily. She reported that the men “were afraid to make complaints, as those few who did were thrown out.” Also, she said, “employees were turned out if they made complaint.”

  Mrs. Stone and her chapter members wrote the state UDC organization, telling women across the state “we are convinced that the present Commandant is unfit for the place.” (Five months after Mrs. Stone's letter was circulated by the UDC, Daughtry prohibited inmates of the Home from attending her chapter's annual memorial service at Pewee Valley's Confederate Cemetery.)6

  Oldham County attorney Judge R. T. Crowe was no fan of Daughtry's, either. Crowe had successfully defended the Reverend Alexander N. White against one of the commandant's vendettas and had made a point of getting to know White's fellow inmates and Home employees. He was blunt in his opinion to John Leathers: “I do believe that Colonel Daughtry is not temperamentally suited to be Commandant of the Home.”

  Florence Barlow, the Home bookkeeper who had worked with Henry George and was turned out of the Home following Bennett Young's death, kept up a steady correspondence with inmates, veterans across the state, and Pewee Valley residents. She painted Daughtry as a despot and a bully, and she wasn't shy about accusing the commandant of impropriety with his young employee.7

  Daughtry was aware of the discontent swirling about him. He blamed a small group of disloyal employees and disgruntled inmates for spreading grievances. The ringleader, he believed, was wheelchair-bound Dr. Alexander N. White.

  Alexander N. White had come to the Kentucky Confederate Home in 1903 after a ministerial career that, as he described it, “has not been an especially conspicuous one, yet it has not been an obscure one.”

  Born in Mississippi in 1844, White left his family farm in 1861, enlisting in the Forty-second Mississippi Infantry. After the war, he attended seminary, married, and moved to Kentucky in 1875 as minister of a small Baptist church in Paris. Within a year his wife, Jennie, had left him and returned to Mississippi.