Kentucky Mounted Rifles

With my Sharp Practice War of 1812 campaign moving further to the west, I decided to paint up a troop of the Kentucky Mounted Rifles. They  were very active in Michigan which had been under British control since the capture of Detroit in August 1812.

Private Orlando Brown, who fought with the Kentucky Rifles, described their dress and accoutrements:

 "The Government did not equip the Kentucky volunteer in the rifle regiment. He furnished his own gun and his own clothes... This consisted of a hunting-shirt made of linsey, with a fringe border — color either blue, such as obtained from indigo, a pale yellow made from hickory bark, or a dingy brown obtained from the black walnut. His pants were Kentucky jeans, and he walked in shoes or moccasins. Around his waist was a leather belt, on one side was placed the indispensable tomahawk... His well-tried-rifle, faithful and to be trusted in the hour of peril, .... was his weapon of war.”

Red-fringed hunting shirts of various colours are also noted at the Battle of the Thames as are white hat-plumes with red tips. The Osprey Campaign book The Thames 1813 portrays the Kentuckians in uniform black hunting shirts with red fringes but I could find no evidence to support this.

I have therefore chosen to give my men various dark coloured hunting shirts (blue, green and brown) with red fringes and red tipped plumes — plus the blue-uniformed officer. This gives the unit a coherent look without being too uniform. The figures are all Wee Wolf 28 mil Miniatures.

Wee Wolf has the most extensive range of characterful War of 1812 miniatures but coming from the US they incur high postage costs to the UK and the possibility of being slapped with additional import duties (my relatively small order got through without HMG taking a cut!).

The cavalry pennon is taken from a surviving flag of the 3^rd Kentucky Mounted Rifles, restored in 1915 (Kentucky Historical Society). Interestingly it only has 13 stars (in late 1812 there were 19 states). The number ‘1’ inside the circle of stars presumably indicates 1^st troop or company since it is a flag from the 3^rd Regiment.

I copied an image of the original flag.

Then I cleaned it up and colourised in Photoshop, duplicating the image with a horizontal flip to give both sides and a space between for the flagstaff. After sizing down to 1.5cm height and cutting it out, I painted it over before attaching to the flagstaff with PVA. Then I curled it around a cocktail stick as the glue dried to represent movement in the wind.

Needing dismounted figures I have also painted up this group of Wargames Foundry US Volunteers from their War of 1812 range using the same colour scheme. There are only six of them whilst the mounted group has eight. Two mounted men are tolled off to become horse holders when the group dismounts.

I really like the Wargames Foundry figures with their varying poses and headgear variations. Unfortunately Foundry do not have equivalent mounted figures apart from a single man and horse in one of their foot packs.

My next scheduled 1812 game is in August when these men will see their first action.