No, I cannot pin down a specific fight at Lamar, county seat of Barton County, prior to early May 1862 in which "bushwhackers" killed "several soldiers." I wish I could, because I appreciate the challenge. I list the possibilities below.

The problem in the time period of autumn 1861 through April 1862 is that exactly what fighting transpired in many isolated parts of Missouri was never recorded, except in some local accounts. I am a strong believer in the power and truthfulness of most local history. However, there were few newspapers published at this time period and through the end of the war in most parts of southwest Missouri. Add to that, there were few regular Union troops in that time period in that corner of southwest Missouri, and the few that passed through often did not have time to record much of what happened to them, either.

There is only one old Barton County history (Goodspeed's 1889) which gave a few pages to the Civil War, and spent two pages of that telling us all about the fight at Dug Springs in Stone County over two counties away during early August 1861. I don't mean to seem ungrateful to Goodspeed's. On page 546 it told us:

"The population of Barton County was very small at the outbreak of the Civil War..." [fewer people who confided in diaries and letters about what happened there]. This paragraph generalized about the atrocities of "jayhawkers and bushwhackers" and indicated as that continued, "These consisted in the occasional shooting of men who were obnoxious to the raiders, and the burning of barns, dwellings, and the destruction of property generally. Not to exceed half a dozen families were left in the county at one time."

Many communities and counties organized northern home guard companies during 1861 for both defensive and offensive action, and Goodspeed's earlier on page 546 mentioned a southern company of recruits organized in Barton and Cedar Counties. Goodspeed's also tells that at Lamar during 1861 Captain I. N. "Ike" DeLong organized a northern home guard company, though it was "never mustered regularly into United States service; though later many of its members enlisted in different companies recruited in Southwest Missouri and Eastern Kansas, and saw hard service during the war." Goodspeed did not mention that the Federal military authorities in Missouri during the winter of 1861-1862 ordered all northern home guard units to disband, so that probably marked the end of Captain DeLong's company, too. Perhaps the graves mentioned in the memoir were some of DeLong's 1861 home guardsmen that lost their lives in a fight with local or passing southerners.

There were plenty of local or passing southerners between autumn 1861 and May 1862 that traveled through Barton County. All that winter and spring southern leaders all over this region were busy recruiting local units that later rode south to join the Rebel army. In fact, Major General Sterling Price's own southern army remained in this corner of Missouri for months in late 1861 through February 1862. I don't know of any Barton County southern commanders, except Goodspeed's Major Randall of near Horse Creek who in 1861 organized a company from Barton and Cedar Counties that later came under the command of Brigadier General James S. Rains' 8th Division of the southern Missouri State Guard. I see on page 259 of Peterson, McGhee, Lindberg, and Daleen's 1995 "Sterling Price's Lieutenants" that Captain Alexander R. Randall commanded Company F of Colonel James Cawthorn's 4th Missouri Cavalry Regiment in the 8th Division during 1861 and early 1862. Company F was composed mostly of men from Barton County. Perhaps Randall's men killed those soldiers at Lamar.

Operating and recruiting in south Vernon County just north of Barton County during 1861 were southern Colonel DeWitt C. Hunter and also Captain James M. Gatewood. During April 1862 a Captain Joe Woods also recruited or led recruits in Vernon County. Maybe these Confederate recruiters also brought in some Barton County men and may have fought northern men at Lamar. Some of Vernon County guerrilla leaders in the early months of 1862 included former Vernon County sheriff William H. Taylor and the Mayfield brothers. The Mayfields were known to ride far and wide in and around Vernon County at this time. To the east in Dade County Colonel John T. Coffee recruited a regiment for the southern side, too. To the south, lead miner Thomas R. Livingston raised his own guerrilla band as early as the autumn of 1861 that ranged for several counties in this region. To the southeast there was even a guerrilla leader named Hyde Johnson who operated in Lawrence County during the winter of 1861-1862. Or, perhaps southern recruits from someplace far to the north on their way to join the southern army further south killed those men in Lamar on their way through.

Now, who could be those northern soldiers buried at Lamar? I already mentioned Captain DeLong's local men as a possibility. The Union 8th Cavalry Regiment Missouri State Militia was raised all over southwest Missouri that winter and spring, and that unit's killed in battle are buried all over, too. The 2nd Ohio Cavalry operated in that region in the early spring of 1862, and fought Confederate Colonel Sidney D. Jackman's recruiting command of about 60 on Horse Creek in northeast Barton County on May 7, 1862; although that may be soon after your man wrote his memoir. If not, they could very well be the Union soldier graves he saw at or near Lamar. Colonel Drake in his memoirs said both sides had a few killed and wounded, and the Ohioans had one killed, one wounded, and three captured. (I wrote about this on page 79 of my 1862 book and my endnote on page 220 lists three sources.) The state of Ohio said the dead trooper was Corporal William C. Mansfield. Further, for a few days nine companies of the 2nd Ohio Cavalry were stationed at Lamar in late April and early May 1862 according to "Official Records" series 1, vol. 13, pages 371-2. Is it possible that your memoir writer actually saw graves of soldiers who died of disease, and mistakenly assumed they died in action? The 6th Kansas Cavalry operated in Barton County during this same time, so those dead men may be theirs.

Well, that's about as close as I can get. I hope it helped. It may be more like the man who asked for the time and the reply more seemed to tell him how to build a watch (to coin a phrase).

Bruce Nichols