2                   HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY


    Captain Robertson accompanied the family in its various shiftings
through Ross and Logan counties, Ohio, to Clay county, Indiana, being
in his eighteenth year when the homestead was finally fixed on Indiana
soil. The youth had been raised on a farm and had enjoyed but meager
educational advantages, but he was quick to learn and was therefore
so far in advance of most young men of his age that soon after locating
in Clay county he secured a position as a teacher in the district school.
In 1858 he became a clerk in the drygoods store of Oliver H. P. Ash, in
Bowling Green, with whom he remained for nearly three years.
    In 1860-1 Captain Robertson was one of the editors of the “Clay
County Democrat,” but upon the breaking out of the Civil war he
promptly dropped his pen for a gun and enlisted in the first company
raised in Bowling Green. Before the men could muster, however, the
state quota had been filled, and the company was disbanded. In 1861-2
he served as deputy clerk of the Common Pleas and Circuit courts, under
Dillon W. Bridges, and in July of the latter year, under the presidential
call for 300,000 men, he enlisted in Company D, Seventy-first Indiana
Volunteers, afterward known as the Sixth Indiana Cavalry. On the
organization of the company he was made first sergeant, and the regi-
ment assisted in checking the advance of General Kirby Smith into Ken-
tucky. He was captured in the battle of Richmond, that state, on the
30th of August, 1862, but was exchanged and again entered the Ken-
tucky campaign. He was also captured with the other five hundred men
of the Seventy-first Indiana by a force of three thousand cavalry under
the famous John Morgan, the small Union force being at the time as-
signed to guard a railroad bridge at Muldraugh’s Hill. This second
capture occurred on the 28th of December, of the same year. In Jan-
uary, 1863, he was promoted to the second lieutenancy, and on February
18 became first lieutenant. Soon afterward the regiment was changed
to cavalry, and during the fall of that year scouted through eastern Ken-
tucky. On the 16th of October, 1863, he was promoted to be captain of
Company D, Sixth Indiana Cavalry, and was constantly in command of
his company until the expiration of its term of service in 1865. During
the winter of 1863-4 he was at Cumberland Gap, Powell’s River, Mul-
berry Gap, Tazewell and other points in east Tennessee, and in April,
1864, the regiment was re-mounted at Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and
attached to the cavalry corps of the Army of the Ohio, under General
George Stoneman. It joined General Sherman’s army in front of Dalton,
Georgia, May 11, and was thereafter on active duty throughout the
Atlantic campaign, being engaged in the battles of Resaca, Cassville,
New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kenesaw Mountain and Chatta-
hoochee River, In August, 1864, the regiment was sent to Nashville,
Tennessee, and formed a part of the force which drove Forest out of the
state, participating in the battle fought at Pulaski, Tennessee, on the 27th
of September, 1864. Captain Robertson participated in the stirring cam-
paign against Hood, and was in the battles of Nashville, in which the
army of the Confederate leader was routed. He was honorably mus-
tered out of the service at Pulaski, Tennessee, on the 27th of June, 1865.
    At the conclusion of this brave and soldierly service, Captain Rob-
ertson returned for a short time to Bowling Green, but in 1866 located
in Brazil and became the junior partner in the mercantile business of
Wheeler, Bridges and Company, with which he was identified for fifteen
years. As the Republican candidate for auditor of Clay county, in 1867,