The regimental sequence numbering is correct. None of the companies organized prior to February 9, 1862. Company "I", Capt. F. Winston Hunter's "Dallas Light Dragoons", had organized at Selma, Ala., Oct. 24, 1860, as a volunteer militia company. This company reorganized on March 15, 1862, after Hunter spent a year as captain of Co. "F", 3rd Alabama Infantry Regiment.

I don't recall the A.V.C. act making any specific comments about branch of service. Mounted patrols would seem to make more sense than patrols on foot, so it's not reasonable to assume a prohibition against cavalry.

When I studied companies recruited in Barbour County, the largest number of early volunteers in 1861 were young single men who worked in towns like Clayton, Eufaula and Louisville; clerks, shopkeepers and professional men. Commerce seemed to disappear after secession, most of them had little work in town, and service for twelve months didn't seem to be a great sacrifice. Very few of these men owned a horse, and naturally volunteered as infantry.

The next social group to be available for service were the poorest group of agricultural workers. Few owned land or slaves, and if they reported animals other than livestock on their farms, these were usually mules or oxen that could assist them in their work. Again, few if any horses were owned by these men.

Barbour might be somewhat unusual, no mounted units being organized there until 1863. In that year two were recruited for local service which included a substantial number of young men from moderate-sized farms of 100-400 acres. Most came from farm families that raised cotton and owned a few slaves, perhaps 5-20 each. These families often owned at least three horses each.

I'm not able to check my thesis at the moment, so it could well be that some of these figures are off base. I'm not sure I recorded ownership of livestock such as horses, mules and work oxen. If that's the case, I'll correct them as soon as possible.

The point is that ownership of a horse marked a man as possessing a substantial amount of money. A good horse easily cost $200 or more; even a poor mount might command as much as $100. We also must keep in mind that the average farmer with any money to spare would have bought a mule, and expected to pay about $75. Farmers bought these animals to help them with their work. To have bought a horse rather than a mule would have been like a modern-day farmer buying a BMW rather than a truck.

Horses simply weren't available to everyone. I don't mean to imply that horses were a rare sight. Figures for Cherokee County shown here under the "1860 snapshot" --
http://www.rootsweb.com/~alcherok/p-index.htm

These show 1,285 farms in the county, with the total for horses on these farms being 3,171. I wish to point out that horse ownership was concentrated among the higher income groups, and that actual work animals, such as mules and oxen, outnumbered horses in this county and probably most others.