For those of you who have never seen the Pea Ridge Battle Field (aka Battle of Elkhorn Tavern), it is remarkably beautiful. My husband and I visited there in 2002. The Elkhorn Tavern is located on the west side of it, at the edge of a beautiful grove of trees, and an old stage road that comes up through the ravine to the tavern. If I remember correctly, part of the Trail of Tears runs right by there as well. There is a really nice visitor's center, and as we were looking at a showcase with items from the battlefield in it, we began visiting with another visitor. It turned out his family had owned one of the adjoining farms, and for years they turned up grape shot and cannon balls when they plowed, and he would contribute them to the battlefield site. He surmised that those in the case might even be some of them. There was also an amazing exhibit put together by local school children. They researched and replicated letters from different families that were exchanged during the period about the battle. One extremely poignant one was written by a woman who either owned the tavern or was a guest. She described how she had taken the children to the root cellar under the tavern for safety (the original tavern was burned, but it has been duplicated), where they had to stay for three days while the battle raged. The tavern became the hospital if you will, or at least where all of the wounded were taken. While they were down there, the blood from the wounded was so voluminous, it dripped through the cracks in the floor onto them... The battlefield itself reminded me of the one at Gettysburg, which I have also seen. So beautiful, open, and green. So terribly sad to think of them as nothing more than killing fields. If I am successful with my research, it is possible that I had three ancestors fighting there (at Pea Ridge) - one each from the north, the south, and the Cherokee Nation..