There is a plan to commemorate the 'Famous Seven' with a monument like that at Cowan Cemetery on the square at Pocahontas Arkansas in 2015. A review the events of April - May 1865 would be helpful at this point, to clear up some of the uncertainties and inconsistencies in the varying accounts - before that monument is built.
The version of events currently being told in Pocahontas - derived by R. F. Cramer's 1972 History of Wayne Co. - is at odds in important respects with parts of the later accounts. see - http://www.5rhp.org/downloads/St_Charles_Massacre.pdf
If I'm not mistaken, the published accounts by Cletis Ellinghouse have not been included in the discussion here on the message board.
Ellinghouse was unaware of Capt. Bostwick's dispatch - O.R. Vol. 48 Part II pg. 706 -and the role of the 7th Kansas in these events, but he does provided a number of other key details.
In several of his books - where he also explains the familial relations between the men - Ellinghouse has described the 'Famous Seven' and the events leading up to their capture at Peach Orchard Ark. by a 40 man task force - now known to have been led by Capt. James Smith and elements of Co. C of the 7th Kansas Cavalry vol. - who pursued them from Wayne Co. in SE Missouri into NE Arkansas - where they surrendered and where 10 of the 11 were executed by firing squad. Ellinghouse describes how they were buried in a single trench - a mass grave dug by Joel Dennis - the sole survivor - and how Dennis returned to SE Missouri and reported the events to the Missourian's families - who then sent a wagon to Arkansas and retrieved the remains and reburied them at Cowan Cemetery.
Versions of that account can be found here:
2010 Old Wayne: A Brit's Memoir pp 160-167
http://books.google.com/books?id=UjyN1JPmuVYC&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=Cletis+Ellinghouse+famous+seven&source=bl&ots=TMZQePXT_3&sig=21LfBPC0Ay1nRPjfnVOoO2r4KBQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=J18kVPbtB4O0yQSkhYHIBQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBg#v=snippet&q=barnhart&f=false
2008 Mingo: Southeast Missouri's Ancient Swamp and the Countryside Surrounding It - pp 53-57
Ellinghouse got this account from Harry R. Shrum, the step grandson of Stephen Bounds - the man who guided the 7th Kansas.
In Shum's telling of the events, the 7th Kansas task force first caught one of the members of the 'McGee Gang' in Wayne Co. and forced him to divulge the names of those they were pursuing. That unnamed man was then hung from a black oak on a ridge between Hiram and Turkey Creek - Shurm was shown the grave by his step grandfather in 1909.
Shrum also remembered Henry Smith - brother of Joseph Sidney 'Sid' Smith - telling the story of how Sid and his mother had taken an ox team to Arkansas to retrieve the bodies - which included that of his brother George Robert Smith.
Ellinghouse noted that the 'Famous Seven' aka. the 'McGee gang'- were believed to have been responsible for killing Starling Wills in 1864, after their efforts to recruit him failed - and then for looting and burning the home of his widow Susanna Wills in early 1865. Susanna had married Starling Wills following the death of her first husband - Nathanial Cato - who had been a comrade in arms with the 'Famous Seven'. Their actions in killing Wills and burning his widow's house were presumably their way of expressing disapproval of her second choice of husbands. Ellinghouse reported that Susanna and her infant child subsequently died as a result of pneumonia acquired immediately after their home was burned.
Ivan McKee in Lost Family/Lost Cause identified William T. Leeper as the most likely executioner.
That was a reasonable conjecture at the time McKee wrote his book, as Leeper had repeatedly voiced his eagerness to kill guerrillas.
Leeper scouted for the 7th Kansas in an action against guerrillas camped at McKenzie Creek near Patterson on April 15, 1865, during which four of them were killed. Then, on April 23rd 1865, Leeper was encouraged by General J. L. Beveridge to meet a scout leaving from Cape Girardeau led Lt. Grosvenor - at Bloomfield - on Tues. April 24th - and go with them into NE Arkansas to hunt for men operating under the command of M. Jeff Thompson.
Leeper does not appear to have joined in that late April action because - as McKee and others have noted, Leeper wrote from Patterson to Lt. Col. Malone at Pilot Knob on the morning of April 26th, that M. Jeff Thompson was not in SE Missouri with 400 men or 200 men - as had been rumored - but that Leeper had learned on the 25th that those rumors were being spread by a small group of guerrillas - 7 he was told - that included Peter Smith and 'McGee'.
Leeper might have been part of the 40 man task force and could have accompanied the 7th Kansas during their May pursuit of the 'McGee gang' - but I'm unaware of any evidence that he was present.
Bruce Nichols has noted the activities of Peter Smith and Sam Hildebrand in Missouri in 1865 in Vol. IV of his series "Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri" published in 2014. The Smith in the group mentioned by Leeper on the 26th of April seems to have been George Robert Smith – rather than Peter Smith.
Kirby Ross has also discussed some of the events in April and May 1865 leading up to the executions at Peach Orchard.
see http://history-sites.com/cgi-bin/bbs62x/mocwmb/webbbs_config.pl?md=read;id=14984
"According to this report, issued 7 May 1865 by Capt. James Smith, Company C, 7th Kansas Cavalry (Reel F1638 File 16787 Union Provost Marshal Papers, Two or More Civilians, 1861-1867) as per orders, he sent a force to the “residences of the McGees, Cato, and Cowley (sic. Cowan?!) with instructions to burn their premises, confiscate their property….”
The property confiscated consisted of one ox wagon, two yoke of oxen, (six?) head of young cattle, four hundred pounds of side meat. The report also states that the families were sent to Pilot Knob.
Capt. Smith concluded his report by stating -
“The heads of those families were the most noted desperadoes in this section of the country.”