We who are descendants of Murdock Gillis McQuagge are possibly here today because of a hunting accident.

In letters, concerning their mother's pension application for their father's service in the Home Guard, dated in March 1931, William A. McQuagge as Tax Assessor of Jackson County, FL states that "....father (Murdock McQuagge) was never in the regular (Confederate) army....due to the fact that he was so badly crippled before the war was declared between the States until he was rejected from regular duty on account of gun shot wounds received from an accident"; "father was so crippled (because)....he was seriously shot in the left arm...to where he was never able to do manual labor....(to) say nothing of being fit for regular army duty during the war...."; and Archie G. McQuagge as assistant chief clerk of the Circuit Court of Pinellas County, FL states that "time and again I have heard him voluntarily speak of the service he and others rendered as Home Guards and particularly being stationed....at the old Douglas Ferry on the Choctawhatchee River...for the purpose of aiding not only the soldiers to cross over the river but others transporting supplies by ox team to Marianna and other places."

Murdock was in Captain John Gillis' Home Guard in Walton County and after that he was briefly in Captain Jones Company from Vernon. He would possibly have been left to man the river ferry since he was not able to ride all that well and would not have been with Jones Company during the skirmish at Vernon during the 1864 Raid on Marianna. I suspect that his younger brother Malcolm was captured in this raid at Eucheeanna and eventually taken to a Northern prison where he died. His oldest brother Duncan (Lost Son of Euchee Valley) and his older first cousin Angus D. Gillis were killed in action or missing early in the war. His older first cousin Jonathan W. McQuagge from Marianna (enlisted at Montgomery, AL) died from smallpox at Rock Island Prison and is buried at Rock Island Confederate Cemetery , Rock Island County, Illinois . His first cousin Daniel J. McQuagge of Marianna was severely wounded in the face at Chancellorsville, but survived. His oldest cousin Angus McQuagge and younger brother Samuel McQuagge only served a short time with their units.