Sue --

The name appears on St Louis City directories for 1857-58. As a captain of Missouri State Guard, he organized a mounted escort for Gen Daniel M Frost, 9th Division, Missouri State Guard. After the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, the Missouri State Guard disbanded and Champion's little band entered Confederate service as Co "H", 2nd Missouri Cavalry Regt.

See Guide to Missouri Confederate Units, 1861-1865 by James E. McGhee, p 155.

Here's a Missouri veteran's account of the saber charge near Bolivar where Capt Champion was killed.
http://www.confederatevets.com/documents/2_mo_cav_cv_08_22_ltr.shtml

Here's the news account you mentioned concerning Capt Champion and the "Belle of Courtland" --
http://2ndmocavcsa.tripod.com/id5.htm

Since Capt Champion had no family anywhere nearby, I strongly suspect that Capt Champion was buried close to where he died on Aug 30, 1862. The burial site may not be marked today, as Federal soldiers under Colonel Leggett's command would not have been able (or inclined) to identified Confederates found on the field.

A current-day image of the road locking north from Boliver where the charge took place appears in Kenneth A Hafendorfer, They Died by Twos and Tens, p 336. The site is along the railroad about a mile north of Bolivar.

Using Ancestry search methods, 381 females are listed on the 1860 census, Northern Lawrence County AL, would be between ages 15 and 25 in 1862. (Of course that's 13 to 23 in 1860.) If the range is narrowed to ages 17 through 21 in 1862, that's 182 young women. I don't know how many were married at that time or married prior to the summer of 1862, but that would eliminate most of them. If we further narrowed the search to families of substance living near Courtland, that might produce a group of about a dozen or more.

Side note --
If the young lady lived today and had a Twitter account, we'd know all about her with dozens of pictures on the internet. ESPN would offer an apology for calling attention to her and we might later learn that she had agreed to appear in the Confederate edition of SI's swimsuit issue.

Belle of Phenix City, Alabama