I keep running across tantalizing references to the "interesting times" we were having between San Antonio and Eagle Pass during the War; but am having a frustrating time pinning down details. Information on bushwhackers, deserters, vigilantes, guerrillas, Indian raiders, and outlaws can be had for the Northern District and for the northwestern counties of the Western District - particularly Kerr and Gillespie - with a little hunting, and Jesse Sumter's Memoirs (Paso del Aguila: A Chronicle of Frontier Days on the Texas Border, as recorded in the Memories of Jesse Sumter. Compiled by Harry Warren; edited & annotated by Ben E. Pingemot) contain some interesting and violent passages about the border. But what am I to make of offhand comments like this one (in a postwar letter to a Northern relative from a Castroville man): "I had a store before the war & sold a good deal, but during the war, I stopped selling, for there was nothing but robbing, stealing, hanging, & killing, that no one was secure of his life if he was a Confederate, but now the war is over, & everything quite as before, & I mean to reopen the store again." Who robbed and killed who, and what prompted it, and when? When was the Indian raid in which nine Mexican teamsters were killed? Who was Mr. Trumbull, and what was the name of the Bandera County man lynched because: "...he had charge of a train of negro teamsters going with cotton to Eagle Pass, & was hanged by a vigilance committee that thought he was running his negroes into Mexico to keep from giving them up. I think this was done by Mr. Trumbull's committee, but do not believe they were actuated by a love of liberty in this instance." (J. Marvin Hunter, Pioneer History of Bandera County, 1922, reprinted 1970).

And so on. Snippets, no dates, few names, and sometimes when I get a name I can run it down and sometimes not. I live in San Antonio and will be taking research trips into nearby counties soon. Can anyone direct me to potential sources of more information? Rumors and family stories are fine - that's a lot of what I'm finding in print, anyway; and this is story background research, so I'm not averse to embellished versions if nothing more accurate is to be had. Nine-tenths of the information my characters will have to work with will be rumors, anyway.

Thanks for any direction you can point me!