Your ancestor Samuel C. Pendleton, of Savannah or the Savannah area of Andrew County, was actually in three local Union units. I found this online in the Missouri Secretary of State's Office, Missouri State Archives found at http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/soldiers. I applied this information to "The Annual Report of the Missouri Adjutant General for the Year 1865" to discover what happened to these units. Most of that I placed in my previous reply.

Before I go further, I hoped to look up Samuel C. Pendleton in the 1860 Federal Census of Missouri, but my online system is not working tonight, so I leave that to you to research. I used the index for the 1860 Missouri Census that tells me only that Samuel C. Pendleton appeared in page 271 of the census-taker's book for Andrew County living in Nodaway Township of central Andrew County. Since Savannah is located in the center of Nodaway County, and Pendleton's service records mention Savannah, I assume he lived in Savannah, the county seat. The census is helpful to me as a researcher because I can infer from it a householder's relative wealth, his occupation, his place of birth, his age and that of his family members and others living in the household. Sometimes some of that gives me clues I can use to help interpret parts of his military service record.

Back to Pendleton's military service cards for the three units:

First, Pendleton was the commanding sergeant for the entire 81st EMM that was begun about September 1863. The 81st and 82nd EMM regiments of Andrew, Buchanan, and Platte Counties were filled as a great experiment that failed miserably the following year. Union authorities could not get enough "loyal" men of much of those three counties to enroll into these two regiments, and these units were important to stop Kansas jayhawking raids into this area. Union authorities simply did not have enough troops to wait around there for Kansas jayhawkers to appear, so it was imperative to get local men to protect their own communities. These authorities gambled that local men of southern sympathy would protect themselves and their neighborhoods, as long as they did not have to face Confederate regulars. These authorites also hoped these southern men would confront southern guerrillas to also drive them away if they came by. The problem was that during the winter of 1864-1865 several Confederate behind-Union-lines recruiters, namely Colonel John H. Winston and Lieutenant Colonel John Calhoun "Coon" Thornton, came to Platte and Buchanan Counties stealthily and recruited literally hundreds of southern men. They called upon two area guerrilla units to provide security for them while they continued to recruit large numbers of men. Many of the southern men in the 81st and 82nd EMM Regiments not only refused to interfere with the recruiters and guerrillas, but many of these militiamen worked secretly with Winston and Thornton to assist them in any means possible. Union forces captured Colonel Winston in Platte County, but LTC Thornton continued with his work. A few knowledgeable local northern men warned higher Union commanders that something "was rotten in Denmark" with the 81st and 82nd EMM Regiments, nicknamed "Paw Paw Militia" by detractors, but men in authority believed this was merely an effort to discredit these regiments since they contained a lot of southern men. In early July LTC Thornton took his force out into the open and welcomed hundreds of the 81st and 82nd members with their firearms into his southern uprising. Thornton was of the belief that southern forces from Arkansas would raid Missouri and come to assist him, but Thornton's timetable was two months early and his resurection failed. Even though parts of the 81st and 82nd were composed of many men of northern sympathy, the Federals lost faith in these units, shut them both down, and executed literally scores of their former members who joined the Rebels when they joined Thornton's insurgency.

This may be why in December 1863, months before the insurrection, Command Sergeant Major Pendleton left the 81st EMM and joined the newly-created 88th EMM. Andrew County did not seem to be too involved in the subterfuge that Platte and Buchanan County members of the unit engaged in. Maybe Pendleton was offered a promotion if he swithched units. I say this because his record in the 81st EMM call him "Com. Sergeant." This probably means he was "commissary sergeant" who worked with the quartermaster's section of the regiment to handle logistics. In his record for the 88th EMM his record calls him "commanding sergeant," although I am suspicious that he was "commissary sergeant" again and somebody misinterpreted that to mean " commanding sergeant." Of course, this is conjecture.

What is clear is that Pendleton's individual record states that at age 40 on 30 April 1864 Samuel C. Pendleton was placed in the position of First Lieutenant of Company E of the Andrew County Battalion of EMM we discussed earlier.

The officer roster of the Andrew County Battalion Provisional EMM states that S.C. Pendleton was placed in the position of First Lieutenant of Company E as of 30 April 1864. He held that position until the entire EMM apparatus in the state was dismantled in March 1865 when civil law was restored in the state. From this we can conclude that he gave faithful service. Evidently, his service in the 81st EMM did not discredit him.

Bruce Nichols