Bracken County Brother Against Brother

It is a common theme about the Civil War, brother against brother. It did not happen nearly as often as we are led to believe, but within the border states of Missouri and Kentucky families with divided loyalties certainly had its share of brother against brother, or father against son, or brother in laws on opposite sides (such as John H. Morgan and Sanders Bruce, his brother-in-law from Morgan’s first marriage).

Bracken County has its own example, that of the Routt brothers. Nimrod Routt (the elder) had eleven children, including two sons who served during the Civil War, Isham and Nimrod (the younger). Isham would serve in the Confederate Army, while brother Nimrod would serve the Union. Father Nimrod had served in the War of 1812 as a private in Richard Johnson’s Mounted Regiment of Kentucky Volunteers.

Isham was born November 10th, 1821. He would serve in the Mexican-American War as a private in Company D of the First Regiment Kentucky Cavalry, the same unit that Morgan himself would serve at the Battle of Buena Vista. Returning to Kentucky he would be listed as a farmer on the 1850 United States Census, living on his father’s property. During the Civil War Isham would join Captain Orville (or Oliver) G. Cameron’s company of Kentucky volunteer cavalry in Russell County, Virginia on November 22, 1861, Isham having brought a bay horse with him as his mount (in Confederate cavalry units the men provided their own horses). This company would later be Company A of the First Battalion Kentucky Mounted Rifles, which formed in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and of which Isham would serve as sergeant. (Also serving in Company A of the First Battalion Kentucky Mounted Rifles were George, James, and Thornton Routt, which I believe are nephews of Isham) One record indicates he joined Company A on October 18th in Prestonsburg, which contradicts his service with Cameron’s company. Regardless, Isham would muster out of the service on November 20, 1862 with the rank of fifth sergeant. He would later join Bart W. Jenkins’ company of cavalry as a private near Frankfurt, Kentucky on June 10, 1864, which was during Morgan’s Last Kentucky Raid that ended in a fiasco at Cynthiana. Routt might have been present for that action but as he joined the day before the fighting at Cynthiana and Frankfort being thirty-files miles away, it is unlikely. Had he been, he might have faced off against Nimrod. Isham would die on August 22, 1877, and is buried in the Routt Cemetery near Milford.

Younger brother Nimrod, born on January 6, 1829, was also in 1850 living on his father’s farm. By 1860 he was married and living as a farmer in Pendleton County. Nimrod did not immediately enlist during the Civil War (he did have young children living at home), but enrolled on June 6, 1863 in Bracken County, as was mustered into service on July 30th in Company B of the Fortieth Kentucky Infantry Regiment as a private in Falmouth. He was promoted to corporal on February 25, 1864, and would muster out of service at Catlettsburg on December 30th that same year. He might have seen action at Mount Sterling in December 1863, Cynthiana in June 1864, and at Saltvlle in October as his service records indicate that he was present with the regiment during those months. By 1900 he was living in Harrison County with his daughter and would spend at least twenty years in that arrangement, his wife Mary having died in 1890. Nimrod would die on March 23, 1926, and is buried in the old Brooksville Cemetery.

There you have the story of two brothers, both serving in Kentucky units, one blue, one butternut, who might have even faced each other across the field at Cynthiana on the early morning of June 12, 1864.