Drawing of Brigadier General Meriwether (“Jeff”) Thompson of the 1st Division, Missouri State Guard and fellow inmates at the Union prison camp on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie. Thompson, known as the “Swamp Fox,” was captured near Pocahontas, Arkansas, on August 22, 1863, and was not exchanged until August 3, 1864. He joined Sterling Price ...
Mosby Monroe Parsons was born on May 21, 1822, in Charlottesville, Virginia. At age 13 his family moved to Cole County, Missouri, and two years later to Jefferson City, Missouri. He left his law practice to volunteer for the Mexican-American War and, as a captain, commanded Company F of Colonel Alexander Doniphan’s Missouri Mounted Volunteers. ...
Stephen Kearney (Kearny) Parsons (named for Mexican War General Stephen Watts Kearney), born in August 1851, was the son of Confederate General Mosby M. Parsons, commander of the 6th Division, Missouri State Guard and later a brigade and division commander in the Confederate army. General Parsons fought in numerous battles, including Carthage, Wilson’s Creek, Pea ...
Lebbeus Pindall, born in 1832, moved to Monroe County, Missouri in 1856 and began a law practice in Paris, Missouri. In October 1861, he was elected captain of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Division, Missouri State Guard, and was promoted the following January and became major of the battalion. He also served as ...
Born in Virginia on May 2, 1810, Martha Head married Sterling Price in Randolph County, Missouri, on May 14, 1833; they had seven children, of which five lived to adulthood. During the war she left Missouri and settled in Washington, Texas. In the spring of 1866, Martha joined her husband in Mexico, and ...
Born on July 31, 1837 in Dover, Ohio, William Clarke Quantrill became one of the most famous and controversial guerilla leaders of the Civil War. Moving to Kansas in the 1850s, Quantrill left his former occupation of schoolteacher and began a career stealing livestock and attempting to capture runaway slaves. In December 1860, ...
The first reunion of the men who rode with William Clarke Quantrill was held in September 1898 at Blue Springs, Missouri. They continued to hold annual reunions for thirty-two years, until 1929. The reunions were held in various locations, including Wallace Grove (the home of Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Wallace) in Independence, Mo. This ...
J. P. Renwick was born on November 12, 1838; a native of La Grange, Georgia, he attended and graduated from the Kentucky Military Institute in Frankfort. He enlisted in the 3rd Louisiana Infantry in May 1861 at New Orleans and became the regiment’s sergeant major. The 3rd Louisiana Infantry was part of General Benjamin McCulloch’s ...
Dr. Reuben Samuel was born on January 12, 1828; he married Zerelda James, the mother of Frank and Jesse James, becoming her third husband. Samuel left a medical practice and took up farming, raising tobacco, and acquired slaves. In 1863, Samuel’s step-son, Frank James, a veteran of the Missouri State Guard, joined William ...
Joseph Shelby was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1830, where he was raised and attended Transylvania College; in 1852 he moved to Missouri where he became one of the richest young men in the state as a hemp farmer, rope manufacturer, and steamboat owner. In 1854, he returned to Kentucky, where he recruited a company of ...
Born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1842, Charles Taylor moved to Missouri at an early age. When the Civil War began, “Fletch” became an officer in William Clarke Quantrill’s guerrilla band. He participated in the Battle of Independence on August 11, 1862, and was sent by Quantrill to Lawrence, Kansas to scout the area ...
Henry Clay Taylor, a native of Kentucky, moved to St. Louis with his family in 1832. There he was “given superior educational advantages,” including an opportunity to study at St. Louis University. When the Mexican-American War began, Taylor enlisted in Captain Richard Weightman’s artillery battery in Colonel Alexander Doniphan’s Missouri volunteers. After the war, ...
Meriwether (“Jeff”) Thompson, the “Missouri Swamp Fox,” was born on January 22, 1826, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia; he moved to Liberty, Missouri, in 1847, and St. Joseph, Missouri, a year later. Thompson served as mayor of St. Joseph from 1857 through 1860; he presided over the ceremony for the inaugural ride of the Pony ...
J. J. Ungerer was appointed a chaplain on November 6, 1861, and accepted the appointment on December 12, 1861. In what was surely a formality, Ungerer was then nominated by Confederate President Jefferson Davis on December 21, 1861, and was confirmed by the Confederate Senate on December 24, 1861. Initially assigned to the ...
