I was able to at least find your ancestors in the 1860 census of Lebanon Township, Laclede County, which gives me clues about what you wrote of your family history.

Before we get to that, I am having problems with your family in Linn County, MO, mainly because it is so very far away from Laclede County, MO. Are you sure your family history says "Linn County?" A minor point of what bothers me about Linn County to a Laclede County family is that there is a Civil War town of Laclede, MO in Linn County. I simply wonder if somebody got their geography switched from Laclede County to a town called Laclede in Linn County. Like I said, this is a minor point. I will say that the Union military guarded well the Hannibal to St. Joseph Railroad that ran through Linn County during the war (through the town of Laclede in Linn County, too). Those soldiers would have captured or worse any southerner they deemed a threat to that railroad, but there was no prison there, only town jails. They would have sent anybody captured in Linn County to a major Union base that had a jail east on the RR to Macon City in Macon County or west to the major Union base at St. Joseph. Please tell me more about your "one or two references to Linn County," so I can try to see a connection.

Now, back to your ancestors in Laclede County. It is entirely possible that the Confederate army took your family's livestock and the men stole them back. During the last months of 1861 and early 1862 Missouri's southern army was based at Springfield, and they had to send soldiers out some distance to supply the logistics need of that army. If family members gave them trouble it is entirely possible that the southern soldiers (they weren't Confederate soldiers until Missouri's southern army was instituted into the Confederate army in about February 1862) would have taken them captive to a jail in Springfield for a time. Now, if the livestock taking was done after the first weeks of 1862, then we have to be talking of the Union military that took over Springfield when they pushed the southerners south to Arkansas. The Union military used the jail at Springfield just like the southerners did.

The 1860 census indicated that at that time 20-year-old, Missouri-born Jacob A. Forgusson lived in his father, J. D. Forgusson's household. Jacob is listed as a farm laborer, and there are listed six other children of 40-year-old, moderately wealthy farmer J. D. Forgusson. The only Forgusson not in J. D.'s household is a 21-year-old, farm laborer John J. Forgusson living in the household of another farmer about 20 households and four census-taker's pages away.

I was unable to discover anything of a military record for the Forgussons.

Bruce