I found in Broadfoot's "Supplement to the 'O.R.'" that Second Lieutnant Jerry C. Bray was in Captain Thomas A. Sapp's Company K of Colonel Colton Greene's 3rd Missouri Cavalry (CSA) and that Bray was killed in action 11 January 1863. My guess would be that Bray was killed in Marmaduke's January 1863 campaign in southwest MO highlighted by the Battle of Springfield. This source says that Captain Sapp was killed in action 4 March 1863.

The 1952 Douglas County History on page 48 indicates that the Union Douglas County Home Guard under Captain Hartindale during July or August 1861 was threatened by local guerrillas under Bray and Sapp.

I found a "Daily Missouri Republican" newspaper article dated 19 October 1861 that stated that Captain Bray's rebel band captured old man Dishler at home on Bryson's Fork, Ozark County, led Dishler a half mile from the house and murdered him.

There were a number of Bray households in Ozark, Christian, and Howell Counties, but I would closely check the household of Jeramiah Bray of Falling Spring Township in Ozark County in the 1860 Missouri Census. It says he was a Tennessee-born, 18-year-old farmer of modest means ($500 real with $249 personal property) with a 22-year-old wife Sarah J. also born in TN. No children at least in 1860.

I was surprised not to find Jerry Bray mentioned in "Price's Lieutenants," so that may tell me that Bray was not a member of the southern Missouri State Guard during 1861. I have my doubts about this, but I have no evidence to the contrary.

From what I read in Captain Monk's [Union] recently reprinted book about the state of affairs in Ozark and Christian Counties during 1861, I would say that the area was a hotbed of killing and threats that year. I would estimate from this that Jerry C. Bray did his share of it.

Bruce Nichols