Carroll,

Blunt's and Curtis' chief aim was to hammer the oncoming Confederates and keep them as far from Kansas and Kansans as they could. Many Confederates wanted payback for several years of jayhawker raids up and down western MO that were still happening through 1864.

Cook's Store was about where the large German-American town of Concordia is now located in Freedom Township of southeast Lafayette County. During the war many of these men served the Union cause, and a large number of them paid the supreme price for that. About the only place we see the name "Cook's Store" is in the Union war period maps.

Bruce Nichols