Carl and Charles,
Thanks for that input. Thought provoking. Based on what both of you said, there seems to be enough wiggle room with the numbers that the 39th MO Infantry MAY have buried nine of their men at the Wellsville graveyard, if that isn't playing the devil with historic accounts to say that. Perhaps those nine men came from that area and didn't have families who wanted to bury them at home. I recall the 39th, or a large part of it, came from all over NE MO. However, that tends to go against what Charles offered about burying so many in Jeff City.
If it was from the Centralia actions of 27 September 1864, we are mostly assured the southerners took away their own dead, what few of them they had. From remembering my reading, I don't think they would have had as many as nine of them, anyway. And, the 39th men wouldn't have mixed northerners and southerners, I would imagine.
Just to be contrary, those dead may have come from a train wreck or derailment, as they had plenty of those in those days before the invention of the flanged rail wheels that held to the track better.
However, this is little more than conjecture, unless somebody else knows something specific about the dead men in the mass grave in the Wellsville cemetery and pitches in.
Bruce Nichols