It appears we are getting closer to identifying the Bowles of March and April 1862. That helps a lot separating that officer from the man raising five companies of southern recruits working with Colonel Reeves in December 1864 and January 1865. That still appears to be Dick Boze of Oregon County without more evidence to the contrary.

A word about Colonel Reeves I obtained from my contact with the Black River Southern Baptist Association down in that region, the officer whom Boze or whomever was serving under in late 1864 and early 1865. Colonel and Reverend Tim Reeves initiated or chartered a number of Baptist churches along both sides of the Missouri\Arkansas border both before the war and also after the war. As in war, his missionary zeal was untiring. Reeves was released from Union custody some weeks after all other regional POWs were released at the end of the war, undoubtedly because of the field court martial and summary execution he ordered of Major James Wilson and six troopers supposedly of the 3rd Cavalry MSM on 3 October 1864 (one of the six, to this day still unidentified, was evidently not of the 3rd) on the charge of burning the town of Doniphan, Ripley County, on 19 September 1864 or of ordering it done. I interviewed a Baptist minister of the Black River group who read old records to state that the only noticable difference in Reeves after the war as compared to pre-war was that he preached with a loaded revolver on the lecturn in his postwar church work. I imagine that discouraged dozing during his sermons.

Bruce