In an effort to keep threads from getting to far out of hand I started anew with brief biography of Clifton D. Holsclaw. As previously established, Clifton was a regular CSA partisan ranger/guerrilla in central Missouri.
Born to James Holsclaw and Lucinda Feland Holsclaw in Richmond Twsp, Howard County Mo Clifton D. Holsclaw was a contemporary of many familiar names like Jackson and Jackman. Born on 13 Oct 1825, he was the oldest of nine children. The Holsclaws were an affluent agricultural family owning 11 slaves and nearly $17,000 of land and property in the 1860 census. It comes as no surprise then that the male members of the family, being of prime military age, decided to enter into the service of the Missouri State Guard. All five of the Holsclaw boys joined the 6th Missouri Infantry Volunteers, Co G at Cove Creek Arkansas, a devastating decision for the family as it turns out. None escaped unscathed, Clifton being wounded at Elk Horn Tavern, James P. at Vicksburg requiring a long hospitalization, and the other 3 boys making the ultimate sacrifice, William at Corinth, John and Benjamin at Vicksburg. The 6th MO Inf (CSA) was assigned to the First Missouri Brigade under Cockrell at Vicksburg and fought against neighbors and friends on that field of battle but that is yet another story. Suffice it to say, that Mrs. Lucinda Holsclaw had a very bad year from mid summer 1862 on when her eldest son appears back home wounded with a recruiting commission, losing a son in October of that year and then losing 2 more sons with the fifth severely wounded. Put into the mix watching her husband get shot in the head in her own front yard in September of 1863, plus at least one report that her eldest daughter Mary Elizabeth had been killed at home trying to dry gunpowder in the summer of '62, it takes a strong woman to keep the emotions together and the farm running. Clifton establishes a guerrilla unit that plagues the Union officials and militia throughout the years of 1863 and 1864.
He appears to give himself over to authorities in June 1865, taking the oath of allegiance and returning to the Howard County farm he grew up on. 1870 finds him the head of the household, farming, caring for his now 70 year old mother who was to die within a couple of years. Under his care were his younger brother James P. now working as a school teacher and three sisters Eliza J, Frances A., and Sarah M. all old enough to be called spinsters in that day. Eventually, Eliza and Sarah marry in he late 1870's. No off spring is known of from these unions. Clifton and James P. appear to liquidate their limited post war assets and move westward, perhaps to remove themselves from the community which they could easily have felt disassociated from. In 1880 James P. is found living on a farm in Bates Co. Missouri with his older sister Eliza J. (Holsclaw) White, Eliza having married the year before in Howard Co. Missouri to one William C. White. Clifton is just across the border in Linn Co. Kansas working as a carpenter. Sometime in the intervening 20 years, Clifton manages to attend a number of confederate soldier reunions listing his address in 1890 as being in Hume, Missouri which is located in Bates County where his sister and brother have been residing. In the 1900 Census, Clifton is again listed as living with his sister Eliza White in Hume, Bates Co., Missouri where he spends the sunset of his life passing away in July of 1908 apparently having never married nor leaving any off spring. Eliza dies 17 Sept 1913 of uterine cancer, her younger brother James P. being the death certificate informant. James P. dies at age 85 on the farmstead having never married as well, per Ray McConnell the local funeral director who buried all 3 of the Holsclaws in the Hume Cemetery.
Thus a poignant and somewhat sad story of a family, the descendants of an early Missouri pioneer from Kentucky who carved what by any standards of the day would appear to be the pinnacle of agrarian success only to lose it all in the turbulent times of Civil War Missouri.
John R.