Tom --

Thanks for the kind words. In addition to the cards, service file copies ought to have included the widow's death claim submitted in 1863. If not, please reply here.

If you hired a detective to find Needham Temples, it would be important to establish when he was last seen. Here's what can be understood from the service file. Temples was present with his company on the last day of August 1862. That places him in Mississippi with Van Dorn's army less than three weeks before the Battle of Iuka. No ifs, ands or buts.

The next roll (Sept-Oct. 1862) reports him sick, sent to a hospital. Confederate transportation being what it was, Temples must have been sent to a hospital not far from his command. Several hospitals in Mississippi could be found along the main rail line, the Mobile and Ohio. It's still operating today.

The record reports Temples' death on October 20th. If he died in one of the hospitals on the railroad in west central Mississippi, how far away was his family in Clarke County? Wouldn't family members and/or friends have come to get his body?

If they didn't, he's buried with other dead from the hospital in Mississippi. It's quite possible the grave is marked "unknown" or isn't marked at all. However, it would have cost the government money to have shipped a sick soldier hundreds of miles to a distant state lke Tennessee or Kentucky. There's no reason to imagine that this could or would have happened.