A daring raid, a final expression of true love, and an execution by firing squad?

It all happened in Lawrenceburg, 141 years ago today.

A Scottish immigrant and adopted northerner, Colonel George Spalding (pictured here) was certainly not a native of Lawrence County. As provost marshal of Union-occupied Nashville, Spalding is perhaps best remembered as the man who tried to fight the scourge of venereal disease plaguing occupying Union forces in Nashville by organizing one of the first systems of licensed prostitution in the United States. But Spalding stepped into local history on July 22, 1864, when he ordered the execution of a purported Confederate guerilla in Lawrenceburg.

Spalding and men from his Union 12th Tennessee Cavalry were on a five-day scouting mission from Pulaski to Florence when the incident occurred. In his official report, Spalding said, “I…sent parties to Waynesborough, Henrysville, [sic] and up Buffalo Creek and Shoal Creek. One of the parties were fired upon by a party of guerrillas. My men attacked them, killing one. The others made their escape in the woods. One guerrilla that was captured and brought to camp I had shot in Lawrenceburg, and made the citizens bury the body.”

That “guerrilla” was Andrew Blakemore, a 28-year-old husband and father who had completed his time in the Confederate army and come home. According to Bobby Alford’s ‘History of Lawrence County,’ the last letter that Blakemore wrote to his wife while being detained by Spalding’s men said, “I am accused of bushwhacking–God knows I am innocent of the charge, or of any other such acts.”

After his execution, Blakemore’s body was buried in Neal Cemetery on West Point Road. His epitaph reads, “Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.” His wife Bathia, who never remarried, died in 1901.

The execution of Andrew Blakemore, although conducted by military officials and not by civil authorities, remains–as far as I can find–the only recorded public execution in Lawrence County history.