Col. Thomas Woodward

Col. Thomas Woodward was a native of New England, probably born in Vermont. He was small of stature and wore his hair in flowing locks that came down on his shoulders. A long moustache and a stubby beard covered the lower part of his face. He was a graduate of West Point and highly educated. Leaving the army he came to Kentucky in 1848 and taught school for ten or twelve years at various points in Christian County. He was teaching at the Brick Church, on the Princeton road, when the war came on and was one of the first volunteers to tender his services to the Confederacey. 

In 1862, according to Perrin's History, he made a dash into Clarksville and with 200 men, surrounded the college where Col. Mason was encamped with a superior force of Federals. He trained upon it a mock battery of logs mounted on wheels, and demanded Mason's surrender. The ruse worked and Col. Mason surrendered without a fight. When he was brought into Col. Woodward's presence and saw the little man with his long unkempt auburn hair, his drooping moustache and his face as dark as a Spaniard's and his boots coming up to his knees, he laughingly challenged Woodward to go across the street and sit for a picture, saying:

"I want to send it North to show my friends what an insignificant little cuss I surrendered to."

Col. Woodward had the picture taken and presented it to Col. Mason. The picture used herewith was copied from an old daguerreotype, said to be a duplicate of the one referred to.