Yes, that helps a lot. These details help me see a tender picture that I didn't see before, and helps explain the "Houston" business and may clear up Noss' date and place of death.

First, David K. Noss joined a unit with a reputation for hard campaigning and fighting when he joined Major Samuel N. Wood's Missouri Cavalry Battalion. That battalion saw lots of action in the northern Ozarks in 1861 and early 1862. Since Wood's battalion, Major Clark Wright's Missouri Cavalry Battalion and Captain Henry P. Hawkin's Independent Missouri Cavalry Company were nonstandard units, the Union army ordered then to combine to become a standard regiment--the 6th Missouri Cavalry Regiment. During this hard campaigning your ancestor developed consumption, which I think is tuberculosis.

Apparently, Noss was not only a responsible soldier (based on his promotions we have seen in the record), he must also have been very literate for his regiment to make him Orderly Sergeant. You see, I think the orderly sergeant prepares the orders, completes the Morning Report (telling who is fit for duty and who isn't and where everybody is located), completes the regimental records, and so forth. Perhaps Noss' superiors made him orderly sergeant when he became sick so he would not have to go out patrolling and campaigning on horseback in the April weather, but would have an inside job that may help him recover his health.

Noss' health failed to recover, so his regiment sent him home to convalesce or not under the tender mercies of his wife in Miller County. No matter what the record says, his superiors probably realized he may not recover from the consumption. By the way, the regimental officers you cited (Spellman and Cole) are names of real men.

This is where all the errors on Noss' record come in. I believe the 6th had a difficult time finding a replacement for the orderly sergeant vacany that Noss' absence left. Some clerk (like Corporal Klinger in the MASH television show) up to his eyeballs in paperwork he didn't fully understand wrote that Sergeant Noss went home to "Houston" in Miller County and then got his date of death wrong, too. You see, it's tragic in more ways than one when a regiment loses a good orderly sergeant, because all their records go haywire.

Based on what you sent and what I read (some of it between the lines) in Noss' military service record, I believe now that David K. Noss died 3 August 1862 at or near home either in Richwoods Township or in Osage Township. As Dr. Russell suggested, there is a chance that Sarah had her husband's remains shipped home to Beaver County, PA. If not, I think they are still in Richwoods or Osage Township in southeast or east-central Miller County in some cemetery. He may or may not have a military headstone, but he should have such a stone.

Normally, I would suggest at this point that you get in touch with the historical society or genealogical society for Miller County, but, alas, the standard reference on such things seems to show Miller County doesn't have one, unless it materialized in the last few years. Therefore, I suggest you get in touch with the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and see if they happen to have cemetery listings for that part of Miller County. I know there were pushes for counties to come up with such things over the last thirty years, so it is worth asking about. Also, see what they suggest. You may check Beaver County, PA, too. Some of those Yankee counties are good at such recordkeeping.

I wish you good hunting!

Bruce