Dave,

I have no direct information about the Smarr men in Lafayette County, but in the spring of 1864 a number of Confederate recruiting commands rode up into north Missouri from Arkansas in order to have recruits ready when Price's Raid came by that October.

Several rode through or to Lafayette County including Colonel Jeremiah Vardaman Cockrell of near Warrensburg who arrived in late April or early May 1864 tagging along with Quantrill's band coming back from wintering in Texas. Cockrell was wounded in the shoulder from an earlier friendly fire incident on the way north, but since Vard Cockrell was known to be a determined recruiter, I would guess that he recruited in the north Johnson County and Lafayette County area in spite of his painful wound. Colonel Cockrell may have turned his recruits over to other southern recruiters in his area because Bruce Allardice in his 2008 "Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register" on page 104 wrote that Cockrell "accompanied Price's Raid in order to collect his family and take them South," and that he moved to Sherman, Texas after the war (as many Missouri southerners also moved to Grayson County, TX postwar).

Other recruiters led Federals on a wild chase later that spring mostly bound for Ray and Clay Counties north of Lafayette County and the Missouri River, but some of those riders were reported by the pursuing Union cavalry to peel off from the main body in Lafayette County. I don't know the names of those recruiters, but we know the names of some of them who continued north of the Missouri River.

Bruce Nichols