Let me quote from a paragraph detailing the intense guerrilla warfare in the Boone County area during July 1864 referring to Major Solon A. C. Bartlett and a battalion of 3rd Cavalry MSM (Union) sent to Boone County from Jefferson City to tip the scale over to the Yankee side of what had developed into an overwhelming southern guerrilla presence there at that time:

"...Major Bartlett seemed unsure that his men could prevail as he telegraphed Major General Rosecrans July 24 that 'Boone County is infested with rebels to the number of 200 or 300.' The only positive news Bartlett could muster in his early report upon entering the Boone County hotbed of active guerrilla war July 22 was that his men chased two Rebels in west Boone County and killed one--a 'Captain Angel.' The dead man was actually Doctor John M. Angell of northwest Boone County, a Kentucky man who evidently divided his time the previous three years to practicing medicine as well as helping to recruit and train for the southern cause near his home. The troopers left Angell's body in the road where he fell, but soon after Rebels nearby buried the physician with military honors including the firing of a volley over his grave."

My sources for the above include:
--"O.R.", series 1, vol. 41, part 2, p. 377;
--"Bushwhacker Killed," "Missouri Statesman," Columbia, Boone County, 29 July 1864 (newspaper microfilm);
--"Missouri Items," "Daily Missouri Democrat," St. Louis, 2 August 1864, taken word-for-word from the earlier "Missouri Statesman" article (newspaper microfilm);
--"1860 Missouri Census," lists in Bourbon Township of northwest Boone County, the household of 37-year-old, Kentucky-born physician John M. Angell, his 25-year-old wife, and their one-year-old son.

To answer Don's question, yes Dr. Angell was sort of a member of the Confederate Army and sort of a partisan ranger. I don't know if he actually rode with Tom Todd's Boone County area guerrilla band, but they were in the area when he was killed, and I believe but cannot prove that they buried him. I could find no record in the online Missouri State Archives military service records for Angell, either. I conclude from this that the doctor's help to the Confederacy was as a recruiter and military trainer, but that he may not have left his practice and patients to serve in the army. Rural doctors were scarce in those days, and Angell may have figured that his first duty was to his trained profession at home. There were other mostly older southern men in that area that lent their enthusiasm for the cause, and their military experience--if they had any-- to helping recruit for the South and drilling the new recruits, but for one reason or another chose to remain at home and not go to the army with the southern recruits. In Montgomery County, two counties east of Boone County, one-armed Colonel James Brewer did just that, also. At the time Angell was killed Confederate Colonel Caleb Perkins was in the neighborhood attempting to provide military discipline and training to an estimated 100 to 250 new Rebel recruits. Perhaps Dr. Angell had been assisting Perkins. Angell had a perfect disguise to ride through the countryside, and if he and the other man had not attempted to get away, he may have been able to trick the Yanks into accepting his cover story that he was just a country doctor making his rounds. I daresay he must have done that many times before.

I hope this helped.

Bruce Nichols