John Breckinridge Castleman

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At the age of 19, Castleman entered into Confederate service. An obituary reports that he later repented of his support of slavery.

During the Civil War, Castleman recruited 41 men in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, who went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to form the Second Kentucky Cavalry company under John Hunt Morgan.

Castleman was promoted to major in 1864. He led guerrillas in the attempted burning of supply boats in St. Louis, Missouri and was arrested in October 1864 at Sullivan, Indiana. He was convicted of spying and sentenced to death, but his execution was stayed by Abraham Lincoln. Following the war, Castleman was exiled from the United States, and studied medicine in France. He was pardoned by president Andrew Johnson and returned to Kentucky in 1866.

He revived the Louisville Legion, a militia unit, in 1878 and became adjutant general of Kentucky in 1883. The unit became the 1st Kentucky Volunteers in the Spanish–American War, and Castleman was commissioned a colonel in the U.S. Army. His unit participated in the invasion of Puerto Rico, and after the war he was promoted to brigadier general and served as military governor of the island.

Castleman was also notably responsible for helping to keep the Commonwealth of Kentucky together serving as Adjutant General during the infamous Taylor-Goebel troubles, when Kentucky almost devolved into civil war following the assassination of Kentucky Governor William Goebel.

Business career

He graduated from the University of Louisville School of Law in 1868, married, and founded an insurance company, Barbee and Castleman, with his father-in-law. The company represented Royal Insurance Company of Liverpool in the Southern United States.

In 1870, Castleman bought a 60-acre (240,000 m2) tract of land called Schwartz's Wood in what was then the outskirts of Louisville. He intended to build a country estate there, but as Louisville expanded around it quickly, the land became much more valuable as a subdivision. It became the western half of Louisville's Tyler Park neighborhood.

Political career

Castleman never ran for office, but his military and business reputation gave him considerable influence. As a Delegate to the 1892 Democratic National Convention, he successfully lobbied for the nomination of Grover Cleveland. After Governor William Goebel was shot in 1900, Castleman was again appointed adjutant general of Kentucky and was instrumental in averting civil war in Kentucky in the fallout of the assassination.

In Louisville, he had great influence as Commissioner of the Board of Parks for over 25 years, during which time he helped establish Louisville's Olmsted Park system, which spurred development in various parts of Louisville and became one of the city's prized possessions over the next century.

Castleman, while Commissioner of the Board of Parks, fought hard to keep the parks integrated as is evidenced by a 1924 letter signed by 19 prominent African American faith leaders published six years after his death. They wrote in response to the 1924 segregation orders “. . . Gen. Castleman . . .steadfastly refused to allow any kind of racial segregation in the parks of the city . . . African Americans have used all parks of the city . . . without . . hindrance through all these years and with little or no trouble of any kind.”

However, the extent of Castleman's contribution to the establishment of Louisville's Olmsted Park system has been called into question, and it is claimed that Castleman took credit due to (the Northerner, "carpetbagger") Andrew Cowan. Cowan had originally proposed the park system in a 1887 newspaper essay. An Op-ed in the Courier-Journal claimed that "It was Cowan who successfully lobbied for the state legislation to create a Louisville Park Commission. It was Cowan who first invited Olmsted, the renowned landscape architect, to Louisville and who secretly coached the firm on how to price their work in order to win the bid.... If Castleman had his way, Olmsted never would have been hired."

In 1905, he was a key figure supporting Louisville's Fusionist Party, an anti-corruption party. Although the Fusionists never won many elections, they eventually caused reform in Louisville's election system to come about.

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