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On October 8, 1862, life would never be the same for the Dye family. Confederate General Simon Boliver Buckner entered the house with his staff and turned the home into his headquarters. Buckner was commander of the Third Division, which included the brigades of General Saint John Liddell, General Patrick Cleburne, General Bushrod Johnson, and General Sterling Wood. At 2:00 and 3:00 pm, Wood’s and Liddell’s brigades marched past their home as they headed to the battlefield.
After the battle, the home became a field hospital. Arms and legs were amputated and thrown out the window. Blood stains covered the floors. One of the documented soldiers who arrived to the home was Major William Kilgour. William Kilgour was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on June 12, 1828. He was the second child of Colonel Ezekiel and Elizabeth Kilgour. In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, he joined Company B, 13th Illinois Volunteer Infantry and was elected Second Lieutenant. He participated in several minor engagements, such as Wet Glaze, Lynn Creek, Springfield, Missouri and Salem. He also served as Judge Advocate. In 1862, he resigned due to ill health. Several months later, he had recovered from his illness and recruited Company I, 75th Illinois Infantry. At the organization of the regiment, he was promoted to major and ordered to take temporary command of the 75th Illinois Infantry. During the battle of Perryville, the 75th Illinois fought around the Russell House and was severely injured, when a ball passed through his stomach and liver. One of his comrades tried to clean the wound by taking a silk kerchief, soaking the kerchief in whiskey, attaching the kerchief to a ramrod and completely running the ramrod with the silk kerchief through the wound. Most of the doctors thought that his injury was fatal. After his injury, his men took Kilgour to a small log cabin nearby. Kilgour dictated his last message home to his mother to the regimental chaplain William H. Smith. He was later taken to the Dye house.
After the battle of Perryville, Kilgour remained under the care of a Union surgeon at the Dye house until January of 1863, when he was taken to Louisville, Kentucky. Eventually his sister brought him home to recover on sick leave. In 1870, after the war, Major Kilgour sent J. M. Dye an autographed copy of the book A Waif of the War, written by William Summer Dodge, who was also in the 75th Illinois Infantry, as an appreciation for the Dye’s kindness to him and his men.
While Kilgour was recovering in the Dye house, the family had to deal with Union officers and soldiers in their house for not only weeks, but months. To get a feel how the family must have felt with Union soldiers in their kitchen, their bedrooms, their living rooms, one only needs to watch PBS series Mercy Street where Union officers took over the Green family’s home. As a slave owning family, with Union soldiers present, tensions must have been high between the family and the Union occupiers. The family relates an incident where one of the soldiers became rather fresh with Martha Dye. Martha was getting ready to make bread for the day and walked upstairs to get a bowl of flour. When she was heading back down the stairs, the soldier would not let her pass and stood in front of her. She immediately dumped the entire bowl of flour on his head. Another soldier ended up falling for one of the daughters and proposed marriage to Ruth Dye, but she refused his offer. i.
In 1876, John Dye and his family sold the house to Silas Tevis. With damage to the house and blood stains, which was still present today, the family sold their home, never to return to the horror and ill memories. In 1878, John died.
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