David Ballard of Marysville, Kansas, enlisted and was mustered into Company H, 2nd Kansas Cavalry on January 10, 1862, as a private; he was promoted the same day to first lieutenant with the same company. The 2nd Kansas Cavalry was organized on November 8, 1861, at Kansas City, Kansas; the regiment fought at Old Fort Wayne, ...
Captain Alexander Banks (left) served as provost marshal of the Southern District of Kansas in 1863, and in that role negotiated with Confederate guerrilla leader William Clarke Quantrill for the surrender of the Eldridge Hotel during the raid on Lawrence, Kansas in August 1863. Arthur Gunther of Lawrence, Kansas (on right), entered Company D of the ...
Reverend Arthur J. Barton, a native of Pennsylvania, enlisted as the chaplain of the 23rd Iowa Infantry on September 5, 1862. Barton and the regiment were mustered into service two weeks later. The 23rd fought in the battles of Port Gibson, Champion Hill, Big Black River, and the siege of Vicksburg. Reverend Barton and ...
Charles Bates Jr., from Grasshopper Falls (Valley Falls), Kansas, enlisted in the 11th Kansas Infantry on August 15, 1862; he was mustered into federal service on September 15, 1862. In late April 1863 the 11th Kansas Infantry was reorganized as the 11th Kansas Cavalry. The regiment saw action at the 1864 battles of ...
Zimri Barber Bates, a native of New York and a farmer in Sangamon County, Illinois in 1860, listed his residence as Elkhart, Logan County, Illinois when he joined Company G, 10th Illinois Cavalry in November 1861. Commissioned a first lieutenant, Bates was promoted to captain of the company in 1862. The regiment saw ...
Painting by an unknown artist from the perspective of the rear of the Union lines during the Battle of Kirksville, Missouri, August 6-9, 1862. Sent by Major General Sterling Price to enlist troops in northeast Missouri, Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Porter and his recruits fought a number of skirmishes with Union forces in that ...
Undated photograph of John Becker and his wife; John Becker mustered into Federal service as assistant surgeon of the 13th Kansas Volunteer Infantry on September 20, 1862, at Atchison, Kansas. The regiment fought in the 1862 battles of Newtonia and Prairie Grove, and in numerous skirmishes. Becker resigned his commission on February 27, ...
Henry Ward Beecher was born on June 24, 1813, in Litchfield, Connecticut; his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote the famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1847, he became the first minister of the new Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. Beecher was an advocate of women’s suffrage, temperance, and Darwin’s theory of evolution, and ...
Born in Missouri about 1841, Marion Beeler was a resident of Troy, Doniphan County, Kansas. He was mustered in as a first lieutenant in Company B, 13th Kansas Infantry in September 1862. Beeler was promoted to captain in May 1863. He married Ora Canfield in June 1863. The 13th Kansas Infantry fought in the 1862 battles ...
Francis Bennett enlisted in Company G, 4th Iowa Infantry at Mt. Ayr, Iowa, on July 4, 1861, and mustered into federal service at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, on August 15, 1861. On February 11, 1863 he was promoted to lieutenant. After the war, Bennett applied for an invalid pension, claiming he was wounded in ...
Born on March 14, 1782, at Harts Mill, North Carolina, Thomas Hart Benton studied law at the University of North Carolina, but as a young man was attracted by opportunities in the West. He moved his family to a 40,000 acre holding near Nashville, Tennessee. There he established a plantation with schools, churches and mills. ...
Daguerreotype by Unknown Photographer Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 30002
Carte-de-Visite by Unknown Photographer Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 31767
George Bingham was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, on August 9, 1824; he moved with his family to Saline County, Missouri, in 1825. At the age of twenty-one he established a wool-carding business in Arrow Rock, which he continued to operate until 1848. In 1852, Bingham, along with his brother, opened a wagon ...
