I use seven different sources to give me details about the Lamar fight of 5 November 1862. I gave you mention of the "Official Records" put together in the 1880s by the government, and Schrantz' Jaspers County 1923 book. I also have two secondary works written in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Brownlee's "Gray Ghost" and Castel's "Quantrill") and also four guerrilla accounts from men with Quantrill's band. These last six did not have anything to help with your quest.

Remember that Missouri was the frontier or on the edge of the frontier during the 1860s, and there are lots of families whose men simply didn't come home, and nobody knows what happened to them. Sometimes the individual was killed while in company with a few buddies and one or two of those would send a letter to the family or stop by when he could and explain things. Also, in many cases families were not fortunate enough to have even that. Conversely, there were lots of rural families who would find some poor dead man on or near their property with no identification of anything. They would bury the guy with simple dignity and maybe report it someplace if there was anyplace to report it and wonder just who he was and how he came to be killed there. Many times these people were so scared of retribution that they wouldn't report the burial at all. Only God could match them from both ends on those kind of stories. When a man was part of a group or military unit of either side, he had some connection to the rest of the world through that unit or group. But, there were times when he had to be away on some assigned detail or personal chore where he was more vulnerable. Southwest Missouri, particularly, has lots of these stories because of its sparse population during the war. Also, both sides used the vast prairies and lack of large rivers in southwest Missouri as a natural "avenue of approach" to access other parts of Missouri either coming or going. I try to help as best as I can. The trail is cold, so all I can do is to try to match the clues into what was happening in a neighborhood at a certain time with whatever players the person can name. Often, I can look at the map and calculate where the man would have to go and see if his enemies happened to be near and draw a chancy conclusion. I suppose that is better than nothing, but I try not to reach too far and connect the wrong dots to each other. I have enjoyed some success with a few, but for most about what I provided to you is as best as I can do.

You are correct that the oral history passed down through the family usually has a basis in fact, and I give such stories great respect. My family and my wife's family have a few such stories and some have a bit of detail such as a name or a month and year or whatever that we can connect to something to try to see the "bigger picture." One thing to remember is that in such family oral history some of what they were told at the time it happened was not quite correct, but that sort of thing is just part of the "fog of war" as the military calls it. The name calling gets in the way, too. Some old stories have "bushwhackers" who rode up and shot great, great grandfather in his yard, and later I find that these were soldiers on the other side and the family called them "bushwhackers" because they acted like bushwhackers. Also lots of guerrillas wore Union blue when they traveled long distances for safety reasons, and that tends to produce confused stories, too. It's hard to identify the players in life's dramas without a cast list printed on the back of the programme.

Yes, I will keep our correspondence, and if I would stumble on more of the pieces I plan to get back to you. I have done that in some cases. Likewise, if you find something please do come back to me and share. I get a lot of these, so please, when you come back months or years later, clue me in with a few details to jog my memory so I can fit you in. I use a lot of these cases in my writing but only with permission.

Bruce