Thanks, Ken. I'm interested in knowing your avenue for narrowing your search to the exact township on the census records. So far, I've not had any luck searching early records for Polk or neighboring counties.

I realized that Mena wasn't "organized" at that time, but oral family history localized it to that area of Polk County. I'll check those sites again. I've not looked there lately.

From history records, I have deduced that my Confederate ancestor, who never returned from his enlistment at Fort Smith, probably joined because of localized hostility; otherwise I don't think he'd have left his young family alone. Your idea it could have been related to the Confederate retreat from Ft Smith in the area north of Waldron is a good possibility.

The Union force in the area consisted of an Indian raiding party on the OK/AR border. I know they wreaked havoc all the way to Texas from Northern Arkansas/Oklahoma. Let me know if you stumble onto any definitive history records in the meantime.