Veteran's grave marked 76 years after his death by Stephen D. Bowling from The Jackson Times |
The marker erected for Civil War veteran Alexander Creech |
The Wolfe County News Friday May 7, 1999
Carlos Brock, of Perry County, and Stephen D. Bowling, of Breathitt County, members of the Ben E. Caudill Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, installed a government military marker for one of Wolfe County's honored veterans, Alexander Creech, on April 15. Alexander Creech was born in Lee County. Virginia on August 22, 1843. He was the son of Hiram and Mary "Polly" (Elkins) Creech. Alexander and his family moved to the Quicksand Creek area of Breathitt County in the late 1850s. Here Alexander grew to adolescence. When the ravages of the Civil War came to Breathitt County, Alexander walked with several other men from Quicksand to Hargis Fields in Jackson and joined the Confederate Army. He was enlisted in Company B of the 5th Kentucky Infantry under Captain William Tyler Barry South on September 7,1862. South had been sent to Breathitt County to raise a company to replace the men mustered out at HazelGreen in the spring and summer of 1862. South had previously served under the command of David F. Swango. Creech served with his company through several engagements in Eastern Kentucky and through much of the Virginia campaigns. In August 1863, orders were received for the 5th Kentucky Infantry to march south by the Loudon Road from Abingdon, Virginia to Chattanooga, Tennessee to help replenish General Bragg's command in anticipation of the Battle of Chickamauga. Many of the men of the 5th Kentucky did not want to leave their homes and as a result nearly one-third of the men in Company left the army and came back to Kentucky on August 10, 1863, near Hansonville, Virginia. Shortly after coming home, Creech was captured near his father's home on Quicksand by members of Captain Bill Strong's Company of Home Guards on February 22, 1864. Alexander was sent to Camp Chase in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he spent the remainder of the war in a Union prison camp. He was released May 15, 1865, and he returned to Breathitt County. In 1870, he married Elizabeth Williams at his father's home on Quicksand Creek. Shonly thereafter, he removed his family to Spencer's Ridge near Quillen Chapel in Wolfe County where he lived the remainder of his life. Alexander Creech was a well known school teacher, shoemaker, farmer and a blacksmith. He died on March 24, 1923, of influenza at his son's home at the age of 82 years and six months. He was buried two days later on March 26, 1923, in the Spencer Cemetery on Spencer's Ridge. He remained unmarked until April 15, 1999, when a marker was placed on his grave in honor of his service to the cause in which he believed.
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