Capt. Aaron Forrest

He was a partner with his brothers in the slave trade. He owned A.H. Forrest and Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1858. Sales stopped in 1860. Researcher Stewart Cruickshank in 2006 has found Aaron as a Captain in the 6th Mississippi Battalion of State Troops. He commanded an operation near Paducah, Kentucky in the spring of 1864 when he was taken ill with pneumonia and died in Dresden, Tennessee. Jack Hurst wrote: “Lt. Col. A. H. Forrest “ is on the Yazoo River with one regiment fighting gunboats and transports”.

HARTFORD CITY was a small river steamer built at McKeesport, Pa., in 1856 and first homeported at Cincinnati, Ohio. In May 1862 she was impressed into Confederate service out of Vicksburg, Miss., to tow rafts and other craft for obstruction of Union gunboat navigation in the Yazoo River. She later transported supplies out of that same Confederate base, but sought refuge in the Yalobusha in July 1863 as the Federal fleet took over control of the Yazoo. On 18 July 1863 Capt. A. H. Forrest, CSA, at Carrollton, Miss., was ordered to send a detachment to burn the steamboats including HARTFORD CITY, said to be located in the Tallahatchie and Yazoo Rivers.