First of all, I am enjoying your new book, "Ride Around Missouri." Nicely done.

I read Cole Younger's 1903 autobiography which on page 48 seems to assert that he served under Shelby. What Cole actually wrote is that "in the fall of 1863" former Quantrill colleague John Jarrett rejoined Shelby's command, leaving 19-year-old Cole in command of the company of which Jarrett had lately been commander. Now, Cole does not state which company he commanded, but he wrote the other officers were Joe Lea (Joseph C. Lea) and Lon Railey, both of whom were in Quantrill's band with Cole Younger, and Railey was from Cass County as was Cole. Neither Lea's nor Railey's military service records clarify in which company these men served during late 1863 and early 1864.

As you probably know, during the winter of 1863-1864 while in Grayson County, Texas, Quantrill was pressured by Confederate General Henry E. McCulloch commanding north Texas with headquarters at Bonham to turn over a large number of his band to regular Confederate service. For reasons I don't know, Quantrill turned over to the regulars mostly the older men who had served the longest in the band, and kept all the "young turks" for continued guerrilla work in his band. Among those he pressured into entering regular service were Thomas Coleman Younger, Joe Lea, his faithful adjutant Bill Gregg, perhaps Lon Railey, and many more of the "old reliables." Mostly because of Quantrill's act of sending these men into the regulars, a large number of them survived the war and several wrote postwar memoirs about their year or two with Quantrill.

Cole in his autobiography on page 48 and 49 tells about exploits in Louisiana "chasing cotton thieves" that winter and asserts that Shelby's adjutant, Major John N. Edwards, recommended Cole Younger and about 40 of his best mounted men to be assigned to General Marmaduke's Division in February 1864 for a scout to interior Arkansas, and Cole included some detail of their exploits on this scout. This, if true, would have been the only time throughout the war that Cole Younger MAY have served under Shelby's command. I have no information if this scout to interior Arkansas actually happened. However, about this same time Shelby himself was busy in north Arkansas rounding up deserters and drafting or conscripting men into Confederate service.

A number of Quantrill's men served with Shelby in the fall of 1862 in northwest Arkansas, while Quantrill was temporarily away trying to obtain a colonelcy from the Confederate high command in Richmond, VA. However, Cole Younger and several other Quantrill men elected to remain behind that winter of 1862 and 1863 in Jackson County, Missouri and continue with guerrilla operations, so Cole did not serve with Shelby in the winter of 1862 and 1863, although many of Quantrill's men did serve with Shelby then.

Cole Younger's autobiography is hazy about Cole's Confederate service after the Louisiana experience, but it appears Cole went west to New Mexico and Arizona perhaps on military orders. While there, Cole deserted and went to California for the remainder of the war, from what I have read.

Bruce Nichols