Linda, I do know that several Union soldiers on Richland Creek close to the Newton/ Searcy Co line were dug up about twenty years after the civil war.Where they were taken to I do not know, but they were removed from the area. They had been hung and taken down and buried by the people who owned the land where the event happened..[Standridge family] Not that the family killed them, but this is a possibility.The soldiers were buried in a shallow grave.
John Standridge and two sons, were killed by Bushwhackers and buried in Richland Cemetary by the women with only bed pillows and blankets for a coffin.. Whether these soldiers or Bushwhackers in the area killed both, or the soldiers killed the family and revenge was had,I do not know. Either is a possibility.
Since the family were mostly Unionist, I find it more likely it was Bushwhackers. The family were "conditional Unionist`s", not abolitionists.
Does anyone have information about the several incidents along Richland Creek? It was the main road through the area at the time and many bales of cotton went through the area headed for Russellville [Pope Co.],or even Texas,where their bales of cotton were shipped "out the back door" of the Confederacy. That is...they went to Texas where their cotton was baled for shipment to France and England, whose ships were standing outside the embargo area,off the coast.
The Confederates put their cotton on Mexican ships and blythly sailed down the Rio Grande River out into, and past the union ships, all legal.
Mexico was a friend of the Confederacy. ,Lou Kilgore