Thank you so much. This is INCREDIBLY helpful.
I love the painting you enclosed. By coincidence, I had just checked out a book of Strain's paintings from the library.
I do have one more question:
Kentucky was not a "free" state, but a border state, and did not secede. Do you know if deserters from Confederate units would have been treated differently in Kentucky than in the states of the Confederacy? My g-grandfather shows up in Richmond KY by 1867 in a tax record. I can find him in no records (so far) between 1863, when he disappeared from Dalton, and the tax record in 1867.
Mij Woodward