Dear Martin, Thank you so much for all this info. I am going to send for Jacob's military record to see if I can get any more info on the cause of his death. I will let you know if there is anything new. Yes alot of my family did end up in Oklahoma. The Payne family settled in Cherokee County, Kansas about 1870 (No census records found I think, because they were squatters on the Cherokee strip; they couldn't afford to pay the inflated land prices on the land they had already settled on). Jacob's younger sister, Martha Jane married Francis Marion Scott (my great-grandparents). They raised their children in Cherokee Co. Many of the Payne siblings moved on to Oklahoma at this time. Martha and Francis's son Winfield Scott ran away from home at age 9 to live with the Cherokee Indians for a while and then with a family in Skiatook, Oklahoma. All the Scott boys ran away from home at a young age (including my grandfather Delbert Scott, at age 12). Francis ("Frank") was a hard man. He and Martha eventually moved on to Hastings, Jefferson Co., Oklahoma were they died in the 1930s. Other places that my relatives settled in were Black Dog and Nowata, Oklahoma. There are still Scott and Payne family members in Oklahoma whom I have not yet connected with. Hopefully, one day I will. I am surprised at the amount of info I have on the Payne family in North Carolina through family info and through deeds. Most official documents were destroyed when the Court Houses, Town Clerk Office's, church records (if they ever existed; my family lived in many rural areas serviced by circuit preachers), etc. were destroyed during the Civil War. There is so much more I would like to have! Thank you for all the new info I have. This gives me hope that I will be able to find out more. Even after all these years, it's painful to think of a young man dying alone in a war in a far off place with no one to remember him. Thanks again. Sincerely, Barbara Estabrook