John,
Wonderful effort!

I looked in the 1860 census of Missouri but could find no L. Crabtree or L. C. Crabtree, particularly across the central counties from Texas County to the south all the way to Howard and Chariton Counties to the north with no luck. Perhaps if somebody would search the 1850 Missouri census, under the assumption that the 1860 census missed our man, or he was one of these who felt the census was an intrusion upon privacy. I found lots of MO CW men in the 1850 census who failed to appear in the 1860 one.

Assuming somebody who recruited for the southern cause in 1861 and 1862 had a military background in an earlier Missouri war, such as the Mexican War or the Blackhawk War, I searched every Crabtree I could find in the Missouri State Archives online search engine of those military service records. Sadly, no dice!!

I am almost sure Crabtree's mortal wounding by the German-American chaps took place in September or early October 1862, based on the Brunswick newspaper account of 16 October 1862, as mentioned in my earlier reply. Ignore the Union military's claim that Crabtree still led his old band in 1864 under this documented assumption. They were sadly misinformed!

We will determine real biograpical data on this guy yet.
Bruce