Keith and Pamela,

I saw that, too, but unsure it's your James Bell, as the prison ledger record says that James Bell was of St. Louis and was captured there. I have some theories why the St. Louis area military prisons sent that Bell to Cairo, but I really don't know. That appeared to be the only James Bell that came even close in the prison records. Those prison ledger entries may not be the complete record

In the online Missouri State Archives in the Provost Marshal records I found that a James H. Bell of Reynolds County in record #F1229 took an oath of allegiance for the provost marshal's office on 7 November 1862. I am guessing the provost marshal's office wanted some guarantee of Bell's allegiance since he probably failed to show for his local 68th EMM company's drills in Reynolds County or in Ironton, Iron County, based on the card you referred to earlier. Don't dwell on the middle initial, because such offices did not often get such things right.

That's about all I could find. I do know that Confederate recruiters found lots of recruits in Reynolds County during the summer of 1862. Perhaps because of that, Union authorities had their suspicions about Reynolds County residents. Reverend Jesse Pratt Richardson, a Chitwood, and others recruited in Reynolds County for the Confederacy later in the war, too.

Bruce Nichols