Sue Mundy's Raids at Midway
Midway, Woodford County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
"Sue Mundy" Here. Jerome Clarke, called Sue Mundy, one of Morgan's Raiders, formed his own guerrilla band on Morgan's death Sept. 1864. Clarke and band raided here November 1, 1864, killing Adam Harper. Four Confederate prisoners executed in reprisal by Union forces. On Feb. 2, 1865, Clarke returned with William Quantrill, another guerrilla leader, burned depot here and stole 15 horses. Erected in 1962.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
After John Hunt Morgan's death in September 1864, Jerome Clarke—notorious under the name 'Sue Mundy'—formed his own guerrilla band and raided Midway that November, killing a resident named Adam Harper. Union forces executed four Confederate prisoners in reprisal. In February 1865, Clarke returned alongside the infamous William Quantrill, burning the depot and stealing fifteen horses, a reminder that Kentucky's guerrilla war raged on to the conflict's very end.
Why it matters
The Sue Mundy raids expose the vicious guerrilla warfare that gripped Kentucky in the war's final months, blurring soldiering into banditry and provoking harsh reprisals.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the autumn of 1864, Kentucky was a state at war with itself. It had never left the Union, yet its loyalties were bitterly split, and much of the countryside had slipped beyond the reach of any orderly army. The great campaigns had moved elsewhere, but the war had not ended here — it had simply changed shape, dissolving into a smaller, meaner conflict fought by mounted bands who lived off the land and struck without warning.
Woodford County sat in the heart of the Bluegrass, prosperous horse country crisscrossed by rail lines and small depot towns like Midway. That prosperity made it a target. Horses meant cavalry, depots meant supplies, and a town on the railroad was a place where a fast-moving band could do real damage and vanish before troops arrived.
This was the world of guerrilla warfare — irregular fighters operating in the seams between the formal armies. To some Kentuckians they were partisans defending their home ground; to others they were little more than armed robbers wrapped in a cause. The line between the two grew thinner with every passing month of the war's final year.
People & events
The figure at the center of this marker is Jerome Clarke, remembered by the strange name he became known by — "Sue Mundy." Clarke had ridden with the Confederate cavalry command of John Hunt Morgan, one of the war's most celebrated raiders. When Morgan was killed in September 1864, the men who had followed him scattered, and some, like Clarke, struck out on their own.
According to the marker, Clarke and his band raided Midway that November and a man named Adam Harper was killed. The reprisal was swift and grim: Union forces executed four Confederate prisoners in answer. This was the terrible arithmetic of guerrilla war, where a single death could summon a rounded-up retaliation, and captured men paid for acts they had no part in.
Clarke returned in February 1865, this time in company with William Quantrill, whose name carried its own dark weight from the guerrilla fighting farther west. Together they burned the depot and made off with fifteen horses. The war had only weeks left to run, but here in the Bluegrass, it was still claiming lives and property to the very end.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to imagine the Civil War as a sequence of great named battles, but the conflict also had this other face — a war of ambushes, reprisals, and blurred allegiances that never made the grand histories. Kentucky's guerrilla struggle is one of its clearest examples, and Midway's small marker preserves a chapter of it.
The events recorded here raise questions that haunted the whole war and the peace that followed: When does a soldier become an outlaw? What is a lawful reprisal, and what is simply revenge? The execution of prisoners in answer to a civilian's death shows how quickly the ordinary rules of war eroded once fighting slipped out of uniform and into the countryside.
Border states like Kentucky carried these wounds long after the armies disbanded. Neighbors had fought neighbors, and memories of raids and reprisals did not fade with a surrender document. Understanding that bitterness is part of understanding why reconciliation came so slowly and unevenly to this part of America.
If you visit
Midway today is a small, walkable Bluegrass town, and part of the power of standing here is the contrast — the quiet, orderly streets against the violent events the marker records. Take a moment to picture the same ground filled with the noise of hooves, the alarm of a raid, and the smoke of a burning depot.
Look for the role the railroad plays in the town's shape. Midway grew up around its rail line, and that same line is what made it a target. Reading the marker with the tracks in view helps you understand why a place this size mattered enough to be raided twice.
This is fine country for an unhurried drive through horse farms and old depot towns, and a marker like this rewards the traveler who slows down. It turns a pretty stop into a window on the hardest, least tidy part of the Civil War — the part fought not on famous fields but in ordinary places like this one.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jerome Clarke
- · William Quantrill
- · John Hunt Morgan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Morgan at Midway
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On July 15, 1862, John Hunt Morgan's raiders swept into Midway during their first Kentucky raid, having seized hundreds of Union horses and mules at Versailles. Learning of an approaching troop train from Frankfort, Morgan tore up the tracks and set his howitzers—but the warned train reversed course, and a second decoy at Lexington also failed. His men reached Georgetown that evening, having sown confusion across the Bluegrass by rail and telegraph.
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