You asked (on "The Illinois in the Civil War Message Board") what happened in Ste. Genevieve County, MO during December 1862 that resulted in two troopers of Company G, 13th Illinois Cavalry being captured by Rebels. You indicated that nothing in these two troopers' Compiled Service Records (CSRs) (for Abraham Draper and George Bowyer) even mentioned this, even though the 13th Illinois Cavalry was active in southeast Missouri during December 1862.

Now, I dragged you over to the Missouri message board in order to see if anyone here could help with this since this involves action in Missouri.

I will take a shot at it, but I have no definitive answer and can only guess. I have a good track record for this sort of thing...but a guess is only a guess.

Guess One: Southeast Missouri was awash in Confederate behind-Union-lines recruiters during December 1862 who were actively bringing hundreds of SE MO men into the southern service. Union Brigadier General John Wynn Davidson's short-lived "Army of Southeast Missouri" stumbled around the region between October 1862 and February 1863 endeavoring to stop this Rebel recruiting. Davidson was not a bad general but he had no concept of how to conduct counter-guerrilla operations, and the Rebels recruiters pretty much ignored him except when they nibbled at his isolated forage-gathering details that wandered around without adequate protection. (Best Source: John F. Bradbury, Jr.'s November 1994 article "'This War is Managed Mighty Strange:'The Army of Southeastern Missouri, 1862-1863," in the "Missouri Historical Review" vol. 89, number 1, for a short history of Davidson's unsuccessful campaign).

Davidson's little army never got close to Ste. Genevieve County, however, but I THINK at least one Rebel recruiter was there, although I can't prove it. Ste. Genevieve County and it's large German-American population was strongly northern in sympathy, but the county had some southern men, too. Confederate Lieutenant or Captain Francis Valle of adjoining Perry County was captured in Wayne County, MO in March 1862 probably on a recruiting mission and sent through the Union military prison system, that MAY have resulted in his exchange by December. Valle returned to the Perry County area at least twice during the war to recruit suthern men, so I WONDER if he may have been back in his home region quietly recruiting again in December 1862. In carrying out his work he may have had to capture those two Illinois privates who happened upon his little operation. You didn't say, but I gather these two troopers were captured and promptly paroled by their captors. If this is the case, Union soldiers on parole in east Missouri were usually sent to Benton Barracks in St. Louis to await their exchange. Does their CSRs indicate duty at Benton Barracks, St. Louis during early 1863? Of course, this is all conjecture since I don't really know that Francis Valle was in the Ste. Genevieve County area during December 1862, and the scant Union military record shows no action of any kind there in December 1862. Perhaps Draper and Bowyer were carrying dispatches between their regiment in the field or Davidson's little army and the Department of the Missouri headquarters in St. Louis when they were captured or on some other detail that somehow placed them in Ste. Genevieve County.

By the way, I examined the company records of the 13th Illinois Cavalry in Broadfoot Publishing Company's huge set of "Supplement to the 'O.R.', Part 2, Record of Events, volume 8 for this regiment. Sadly, the Company G record offers no clue, but other companies (A, B, and C,) barely mention that elements of this regiment were in some kind of action in or near Van Buren, Carter County county seat, on 28 December 1862. Frederick Dyer's landmark "A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion" in the regiment's thumbnail history indicates that action took place 21 December 1862 in Van Buren, Arkansas, but as the above mentioned Company A, B, and C records tell us this took place in little Van Buren in Missouri, on on 28 December and not 21 December! I told you the records are scanty! I am sure Dyer goofed on this one, as I favor three Yankee cavalry company records that are primary sources compared to Dyer's postwar assembly of facts.

Guess Two: I don't know where you learned Draper and Bowyer were captured in Ste. Genevieve County. (Please tell us.) This guess says that source, whatever it is, is mistaken and that those two troopers were somehow captured in Carter County, Missouri on December 28 chasing Rebel Colonel Colton Green's men. As you can see, records of the guerrilla war in Missouri are full of holes for this period.

Well, that's my guesses. Anybody else like to take a crack at this one? Bob, please respond and tell us what record states these two were captured in Ste. Genevieve County, MO during December 1862, and any other detail you have on this.

Bruce Nichols