Major Bridgewater Remembrance – Bridgewater Camp 7

Major Bridgewater Remembrance The MAJ James H. Bridgewater Camp 7, of the Department of Kentucky, and the Bridgewater Scouts

SVR Company held a remembrance service on July 17, 2017. The service was in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the death of Major Bridgewater. Participating in the service were Members of the Camp and Company, as well as Officers of the Stanford Police Department, Lincoln Masonic Lodge Number 60, the Mayor of Stanford, the Lincoln County Judge Executive, a bugler from Caswell Saufley American Legion Post and descendants of men who served under Bridgewater.
L to R: Alyce Hazlett Houp, Tim Carman, Tony Todd PCC, Dave Gambrel PCC, Timothy Downey PDC, Harry Hazlett, Jack Hazlett. The Hazletts are the great-great grandchildren of James R. Hazlett Company B, Halls Gap Battalion.

Bridgewater was born in 1835 in Virginia. He moved to Lincoln County, Kentucky in the 1850s. Bridgewater enrolled as a Second Lieutenant in Company F of the Third Kentucky Volunteer Infantry on July 20, 1861. He formed Bridgewater Scouts Kentucky State Guard Company with the rank of Captain on November 10, 1863. This Company was raised as an Independent Company of Scouts attached to the Secret Service. Beginning June 1, 1864, this Company became Company A of the Hall’s Gap Battalion. Bridgewater was promoted Major and commanded the Battalion from March 1, 1865 until its muster out on July 27, 1865.

In addition to his military service, Bridgewater joined the Lincoln Masonic Lodge Number 60 in September 1861. Also, a letter to Federal authorities dated in January 1863 was signed by Bridgewater as “Chief of Police, Stanford, Kentucky.”

Although reports and correspondences found in The Official Records speak glowingly of Bridgewater’s prowess as a guerilla hunter and source of intelligence, he became a controversial figure among some local citizens. Numerous citizens complained of the Scouts taking horses, guns and food while in pursuit of confederate guerrillas. Citizens also complained that he encouraged their slaves to run away.

After the war, Bridgewater ran unsuccessfully for the state House of Representatives and went to work for the Freedman’s Bureau. Bridgewater went to Louisville in May 1867 to turn in a list of “regulators” in the area who were allegedly terrorizing the former slaves and Union men. On July 17, 1867, while in a saloon in downtown Stanford, a group of men murdered Bridgewater. The men were acquitted the following week in a trial in which no witnesses for the prosecution showed up to testify. Our service was held in a Memorial Park in Stanford, two blocks from where Bridgewater was murdered.

Bridgewater was buried with full Masonic Rites in the Logan’s Creek Cemetery in Lincoln County. Among those who took part in the service was Thomas W. Napier, who had served as a lieutenant colonel in the confederate 6th Kentucky Cavalry and was a Lodge brother of Bridgewater. Soon after its formation, the Camp obtained and placed a veteran’s marker for the Major.

The Bridgewater Camp and SVR Company were formed in September 2006. They primarily draw membership from locations in south central Kentucky, those same areas where MAJ Bridgewater conducted many successful operations in support of the War of the Rebellion