I am like you. I have been searching for several years trying to confirm that my GG Grandfather Giles Taylor of Co. "I", 3rd Arkansas, fell at Chickamauga. His last muster roll record indicates that he was present for duty August 31st, 1863. There is no record of him after that date and as far as I can find from census and family records he doesn't return home from the war.

Calvin Collier in his book "They'll Do to Tie To" seems to want to say that many of these men deserted upon hearing the news that Little Rock had been occupied on Sept. 10th, but I don't see much oppertunity for the men to have recieved that news or to have deserted because of it, considering the traveling schedule that they were following to get to Chickamauga by the 19th. Their only oppertunity as I see it would have been the short time they were changing trains in Atlanta. For that matter my Grandfather could have fell off the roof of one of the boxcars during the night for all anyone knew.

In my estimation many of those men whose records are unclear as to what happened to them after the August 31st muster were left laying in that ditch in Vinards Field in that back and forth action on the 19th. Again the 3rd Ark. holding the left flank of the Confederate Line against 3 times it numbers on the 19th.

As you well know that the 3rd seemed to have fallen back to their original position at the end of that days fighting leaving their wounded and dead on that field and then were withdrawn during that night to the center of the Confederate lines for the next days assualt. It would seem that the casualities of the 19th's battle were abandoned on the field and never recorded after the battle since by that time what was left of the 3rd Ark. was far away from that position, and burial parties were already at work.

The only thing I can think of that maybe will give us an idea of those casualities is a comparison of the August 31st Muster and the October 31st muster and those who re-enlisted in early 1864 and the following musters. I doubt that we will ever know the actual fate of those men who went "missing" between those two records.