Thanks. Glad to know you are in the vicinity. If a local library there has the Compiled Service Records for Union Missouri soldiers, then this file can be accessed in the citing I earlier provided. The reels of film entitled Personal Papers are alphabetical in nature but this does not make them easy to use as more than one person is generally mentioned in the files. When I am researching an EMM fellow, I will sometimes take a peek at this film and have found some remarkable data. The file of Frank Brickey is one such discovery while the file of Robert Lindsay is another. Lindsay had a Hawkins Cavalry connection and some good reference to that organization is found in his file. I will also make these comments as to the Special Collections citing at Duke University. A local researcher tipped me off on this source once showing me a well-copied document from their holdings on Capt. Craig's Big River Company of Missouri Militia. As I wanted to cite the document, but not having permission to use it, I wrote Duke and was referred to an intern graduate student who helped me get copies and permission to use all the General Orders, letters, etc. It was a great find and I published what I had an interest in earlier this year. This source at the Univ. has moved on to other careers, and, as I know she can't help you in this respect---I won't provide her name. It would be nice if some Missouri Archive or Library had some of this stuff. I, like you, prefer to search things out on my own but knowing which path to take is the dilemna. On another front, I have been developing a theory as to why so many Mo. militias in the latter half of 1864 and, in part, I wondererd if it did not have something to do with the upcoming Draft. Of course those militiamen would have still been subject to the Draft as were other six month men (ie:47th Mo. Inf.) but had the draft sapped substantial numbers of men from Southeast Missouri, at least the militias could still protect the citizenry.

You may know that, in addition to the varied militia organizations, there was some push for 100 Day Regiments in Missouri similiar to those in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, etc. in mid-1864. Bob