Confederate Memorial Fountain in Hopkinsville

The Confederate Memorial Fountain in Hopkinsville, Kentucky is a monument placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was dedicated in October 1911.

During the war, Nathan Bedford Forrest made his winter headquarters at Hopkinsville in 1861–1862. On December 12, 1864, Confederate General Hylan B. Lyon burned the county courthouse at Hopkinsville, but the records survived.

The memorial fountain, eight feet tall and made of white marble, was built after the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy spent five years raising the funds to erect it. It was initially located at the corner of 9th Street and Main Street, but was later moved to the front of the Christian County Courthouse. It was built as a public drinking fountain, but the mechanism no longer works.

On July 17, 1997, the Confederate Memorial Fountain in Hopkinsville was one of sixty different monuments related to the Civil War in Kentucky placed on the National Register of Historic Places, as part of the Civil War Monuments of Kentucky Multiple Property Submission. Three other monuments on this Multiple Property Submission were also fountains: two of these are the Confederate Monument of Cadiz and the Confederate Memorial in Mayfield. Fourteen other monuments were built due to the efforts of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Latham Confederate Monument is also in Hopkinsville; it is located at Riverside Cemetery to the north side of town.

Famous quotes containing the words confederate, memorial and/or fountain:

    Well, you Yankees and your holy principle about savin’ the Union. You’re plunderin’ pirates that’s what. Well, you think there’s no Confederate army where you’re goin’. You think our boys are asleep down here. Well, they’ll catch up to you and they’ll cut you to pieces you, you nameless, fatherless scum. I wish I could be there to see it.
    John Lee Mahin (1902–1984)

    I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    A woman moved is like a fountain troubled.
    Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
    And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
    Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)