Happy Halloween!

Did a local Civil War soldier foresee his own death in a dream?

One of Lawrence County’s most dangerous men was a blacksmith named Lewis Kirk. As a young man, Kirk volunteered to fight in the Mexican War with a local company of men known as the Lawrenceburg Blues.

In 1858, Kirk shot and killed a farmer from Giles County on the Public Square in front of more than 40 witnesses. The farmer had been slandering Kirk’s name around town all afternoon. For this crime, Kirk was sentenced to serve time in the state penitentiary.

However, to Kirk’s good fortune, while he was appealing his case, the Civil War began, and he received a pardon from the governor for agreeing to serve in the Confederate army.

Kirk quickly rose to the rank of captain in the Confederate army, and he commanded a company of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry, a regiment which included many local men.

Kirk’s wartime record (comprised of reports written almost exclusively by his Unionist enemies in contemporary newspapers) is full of tales of him murdering escaped slaves, forcing old men into the Confederate army, executing a Union general while he lay wounded and dying in an ambulance, and he even supposedly once shot a man for refusing to cheer for Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

Needless to say, Kirk was widely reviled by his adversaries. So when he survived the Civil War and was allowed to come home as though nothing had ever happened, it no doubt got under the skin of some Union officers.

Not long after returning home in 1865, Kirk and a party of men which included his friend John Hildreth went hunting south of Lawrenceburg. Kirk was distracted that day, and didn’t seem to be much interested in the hunt. Shortly after it began, he left his deer stand and went to Hildreth’s.

Hildreth told Kirk that he should go back to his stand, lest the deer slip past him.

Kirk shook his head and said, “John, last night I dreamed that a beautiful spotted bird came to me. The bird whispered something I dare not tell you, but I can’t stay off to myself.”

After the hunt, the men returned to Lawrenceburg, and gathered around the Square to talk. A squadron of Federal cavalry rode through town, spoke to the men, and then rode on. When they reached the intersection of Pulaski Street and Locust Avenue, the Federals turned around, went back to the crowd of men, and told Kirk to come with them to Pulaski.

No one ever saw Kirk again.

The Federal soldiers, who later claimed that they had only apprehended Kirk to use as a guide, gunned Kirk down on the Columbia Pike near Lynville and buried him in a shallow grave right beside the road, where he lay until he was re-interred in the Lynnville Cemetery at the turn of the 20th century.

They told their superiors that he tried to escape, which is the version of events that the northern press chose to believe. The story of Kirk’s execution was reported as far away as the New York Times.

What did the spotted bird in Kirk’s dream say to him that would make him not want to be alone on the day he was killed? We will never know. But whatever it was, Kirk seemed to know that his time was short that day in the woods.