The January meeting of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society will be held at the Lloyd Tilghman House and Civil War Museum at 641 Kentucky Avenue in Paducah on Saturday, January 25 beginning at 10:30 a.m.
The meeting will focus on irregular warfare in west Kentucky during the Civil War with a focus on the activities of Adam Rankin Johnson. The program will be presented by Derrick Lindow who has recently published We Shall Conquer or Die: Partisan Warfare in Western Kentucky, a thoroughly researched account of Johnson’s activities.
Lindow describes Johnson’s activities briefly, “A deadly and expensive war within a war was waged behind the lines (and often out of the major headlines) in western Kentucky. In 1862, the region was infested with guerrilla activity that pitted brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor in a personal war that often recognized few boundaries. The riding and fighting took hundreds of lives, destroyed or captured millions of dollars of equipment, and siphoned away thousands of men from the Union war effort.”
“The Jackson Purchase Historical Society is pleased to have Derrick Lindow as our speaker. His work provides a detailed look at the partisan warfare that raged across Kentucky during the Civil War and examines the wide range of issues involved with irregular warfare. We hope people will turn out to hear this important, and often neglected part of the history of our region at that time,” said Bill Mulligan, JPHS president. “Those who have not visited the Tilghman House will have a chance to see a very strong collection of artifacts from the period,” he concluded.
Derrick Lindow is an 8th grade United States history teacher in Owensboro, Kentucky. He graduated from Kentucky Wesleyan College (2010) with a BA in history and holds a Masters in Education from the University of the Cumberlands. He obtained a Master of Arts in history from Western Kentucky University in 2023. He is the 2015 Dr. Tom and Betty Lawrence National History Teacher Award recipient from the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and the 2019 James Madison Fellow for the state of Kentucky. Derrick is the creator and co-administrator of the Western Theater in the Civil War website, which brings together authors and historians to write about that crucial area of the war. The Kentucky native is married to his wife Allie and is the father of two boys, Ezra and Owen.
In 1958, a group of historians met in Murray, Kentucky led by faculty from Murray State University and University of Tennessee-Martin and formed the Jackson Purchase Historical Society to promote interest, study, and preservation of the regional history of the territory encompassed in the Treaty of Tuscaloosa, known as the Jackson Purchase. The society now holds eleven meetings each year with a speaker on Jackson Purchase history and publishes an award-winning Journal on local history. Members include a wide range of people who simply share a love of history and a love of the Jackson Purchase area.
The society recently refurbished its website and an array of information about the society and Jackson Purchase history is available at: jacksonpurchasehistoricalsociety.org.
Free electronic access to back issues of the Journal through 2023 is available through the Murray State University Libraries.
Articles are welcome for future issues of the JPHS Journal and can be sent to the editor, Bill Mulligan at billmulligan@murray-ky.net. We also welcome inquiries about topics, books for review, or offers to review a book. Copies of the Journal are available from the Jackson Purchase Historical Society, PO Box 531, Murray, KY 42071. The cost is $15.90 including postage and sales tax. Anyone interested in Jackson Purchase history is welcome to join the JPHS.
