Morgan Held Prisoner In Pleasant Hill Church

Morgan Held Prisoner In Pleasant Hill Church. . September 1861 , Morgan caught smuggling Confederate uniforms, After Confederate forces occupied Columbus, a city in far western Kentucky, President Lincoln proclaimed that commercial trade with the Confederacy be stopped., Southern-leaning John Hunt Morgan, a Lexington hemp producer, ignored the blockade. He, along with four companions, attempted to take two wagonloads of jeans used for Confederate uniforms through the federal blockade. Their route to Tennessee brought them down the old Lexington-to-Nashville Road, which ran by this church. Taylor County Home Guards caught the smugglers in the nearby village of Saloma., Morgan was placed inside the log Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. When a "rebel force collected to attempt his rescue," 30 Home Guards kept guard over him. After three days, he was released. After his return to Lexington, Morgan organized his followers from the Lexington Rifles. In mid-September they rode out of the city with their weapons under a load of hay and enlisted as a cavalry company in the Confederate Army., Pleasant Hill Baptist Church , In the 1830s, neighbors in the area assembled in homes for church services. In 1837 Henry Sanders, a large land owner and operator of Sanders Tavern and Stage Coach Stop, donated land for the church and had the log meeting house built at his own expense. He named it Pleasant Hill after a place in his native Virginia. In May 1840 Good Hope, its mother church, gave permission for members to officially organize this congregation.