Casey,

You are welcome.

The year 1864 was too big for one volume, so January through August comprise Volume III, and September 1864 through June 1865 are covered by Volume IV. However, you have no need of Volume IV to see how Lindsay Hutchinson fits into the bigger picture. I lost track of him after August 1864. I really don't know what became of him. If I built the index correctly, Hutchinson is mentioned by name six times in Volume III (specifically on pages 356, 369, 370-1, 373, 375, and 381, all for July and August 1864), and not at all in the fourth book. Two of the instances I already mentioned are among those six, and the other four I failed to enter on my Hutchinson data page, and neglected to look in my own index when I last wrote. Sorry. I didn't mean to hold back.

The remaining four mentions in Volume III regard Hutchinson and his small band tearing down Union telegraph lines in SW Johnson County, and in other ways pestering the Union presence in that area. Union cavalry patrols tracked him and occasionally flushed his riders out of creek bottoms out into the prairie, but Hutchinson's men were better mounted, and the Union horses were already tired from hunting for the guerrillas.

If I was guessing, and this is conjecture, I would say that Hutchinson was deliberately pulling the tiger's tail in order to impress reluctant southern men of his own neighborhood to join a nearby Confederate recruiting command, possibly that of Colonel Jeremiah Vardaman Cockrell, from the Warrensburg area in more peaceful times. Colonel Cockrell, prewar a Methodist minister, mastered the stealthy mode of recruiting, which he used in this region several times during the war. The Union record mentions Cockrell a couple of times this year, but evidently did not have anything current and solid enough to know where to look for him. It appears Hutchinson used the open, more dangerous method during July and August 1864, probably to save time and get more results. I would not hazard such a guess connecting Hutchinson and Colonel Cockrell in a book without better proof, so, I say again, this is conjecture. I only know that Colonel Vard Cockrell recruited in north Johnson County and south Lafayette County, and Hutchinson was from south Johnson County. It's a reach to connect those dots.

Bruce