First, I want to thank each of you for your input in helping me attempt this riddle.

After studying what little evidence I had and your replies, I am inclined to believe the spring 1862 Dick Bowles that lead 120 Rebels raiding in Bollinger and Cape Girardeau Counties was not the same man I am now studying in the winter of 1864-65 and early 1865.

I am leaning toward saying that the late 1864 and early 1865 man was Dick Boze of Oregon County. Even the Union "Official Records" I am reading says that in December 1864 this "Dick Bowles" was working with Confederate Colonel and Reverend Tim Reeves in Cherokee Bay, Arkansas, not far below the Missouri border. I say this because Colonel Reeves consistently operated in Butler, Ripley, and Wayne Counties, Missouri, which is immediately east of Richard Boze's home in Oregon County. I also believe that Dick Boze was a soldier in either Colonel Thomas Roe Freeman's or Colonel William O. Coleman's regiments earlier in the war, which were both recruited partly in south-central Missouri including Oregon County. The Union military consistently goofed up names of their opponents because their intelligence apparatus was limited and mostly word-of-mouth.

The 1860 census of Johnson Township, east-central Oregon County lists the Boze household as #266 Richard Boze age 22, poor farmer, born Tennessee; wife Elizabeth, age 23, born MO; son James R., age 3, born MO; daughter Levetia, 8 months, born MO; and 23-year-old, Tennessee-born Thomas Dezue?.

I still don't have anything on the Dick Bowles of March 1862 who raided in Bollinger and Cape Girardeau Counties, but it looks to me that that one experience was all Bowles had in Missouri leading irregulars or guerrillas. If I were to guess, I would say that the Dick Bowles of 1862 was a Confederate recruiter or working with Confederate recruiters, because that was the main activity in that part of southeast MO at that time.

This is the way the evidence leads me with what I have now. I really appreciate all the help, and thanks for coming to my rescue.

Bruce Nichols