Yes, there is information about the Union POWs captured at Pilot Knob being released. Bob Schmidt and also Kirby Ross (who both read this forum) while investigating and writing about a rather volatile case of some POWs being killed revealed that General Price's army hung onto their prisoners for a few days for reasons unknown. Price's staff decided after bringing a number of these men with the army in the first days of October to parole and release nearly all of the POWs while the army was passing through Franklin County. As I understand Schmidt's writing about this in his 2000 publicaton "Veterans and Events in the Civil War in Southeast Missouri Volume II," these POWs were not all released at once, but some here and some there, and these men walked their way to the nearest Union troops in the region to report themselves and let their friends and family know they were okay. So, these men were captured on September 26 and 27 in Iron County (and some earlier in other places) and released about October 3 or so in about Franklin County. I think logistics may have had something to do with letting the prisoners go, as the Confederates grew tired of feeding and guarding these guys in an army on the march that was low on rations itself.

Bruce Nichols