April 17th, 2017 – Our 97th meeting!! We continue our seventh year.
The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, April 17th, 2017, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum.
The meeting begins at 7:00 PM and is always open to the public.
Our Speaker and Topic - “Who is Buried in Lovell Harrison Rousseau’s Grave?”
At Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, at the head of the thousands of graves of Union soldiers, is a monument to Lovell H. Rousseau. Cemetery officials today will tell you that the monument is merely a memorial, but the historical record seems not to agree. So who is Lovell H. Rousseau and why might someone be buried in Rousseau’s grave?
Rousseau was born in Kentucky and was a lawyer in Louisville at the beginning of the Civil War. Prior to the war, he had served as an officer in the Mexican War and as a state legislator in both Kentucky and Indiana.
During the Civil War, he raised troops across the Ohio River in Indiana after Kentucky declared itself neutral and led a brigade at Shiloh and a division at Perryville and Stones’ River. Later, he led a cavalry raid during the Atlanta Campaign that took down the railroad from West Point, Georgia to Opelika, Alabama, and defeated Forrest’s cavalry and infantry during Hood’s Tennessee Campaign at Murfreesboro in the Battle of the Cedars.
After the war, he served in Congress, was involved in acquiring Alaska from Russia, and, at the time of his death, was in command of the U.S. Troops in Louisiana.
Rousseau was a colorful and interesting individual, and the subject of a recent biography. David Deatrick of then Louisville Civil War Roundtable will be this month’s speaker and tell us who is buried in Rousseau’s grave.
David Deatrick Jr. was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended Georgetown College (B.A., 1980); the Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University (J.D., 1983) and was admitted to the Kentucky Bar in 1983. He is a member of the Louisville and Kentucky Bar Associations. He also served as Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Thereafter, he joined the law firm of Morgan & Pottinger, PSC, as a litigator. Since 1994, he has been a Partner in the law firm of Deatrick & Spies, PSC and a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the University of Louisville, 1992- 2014.
He has been a member of the Louisville Civil War Roundtable since the mid-1980s and currently serves as its president, his third time being in this post. He has written a number of articles for the Encyclopedia of Louisville, published a few years ago and has edited books for Joe Reinhart and Kenny Hafendorfer, as well as provided maps for a book published by LSU Press.
Please join us for this fascinating look at a prominent Kentucky Unionist.