Ken,

What I have on Dick Boze is that he operated in the Oregon County area under his own name primarily during 1864, and I'm still working on the 1864 volume. I did not mention him in either my 1862 or 1863 books.

The "Official Records" (series 1, vol. 34, part 2, p. 604) quoted Union military sources in March 1864 that this guy was called Dick "Boyce." The 1860 census of Woodside Township in north-central Oregon County (just north of Alton) lists 22-year-old, TN-born Richard Boze and his little family next to the household of his 49-year-old father of the same name. The Federals' name identification of Missouri guerrilla leaders was fair to poor for most of the war, and this is a good example of that practice. You called Boze "Devil Dick," and I noticed with interest that in his household lived a young man named Thomas Dezil, if I read it correctly. This may be Dick's brother-in-law, but I am guessing. I wonder if this man's name had something to do with locals calling Dick Boze "Devil Dick." I really don't know.

If Ed would like to share with me information he has on Boze I would appreciate it. I am always open to find new sources.

It sounds like he has found a wonderful new life for himself in Montana. Many war-weary Missourians fled to the gold fields at Miles City and Bozeman in the 1860s, and some found happiness there. I'm glad to hear that some still do. As for me, I will stay down here with these flat-landers in the mud of Missouri. It's good rich dirt when it dries out.

Some of what I have seen about Dick Boze falls in the folklore category. I use such local tales cautiously if I can tie them to "who, what, when, and where," or even one or two of those. I don't want people to identify me as someone who writes "who hit John" stories, as some call these. Many of the Ozarks Civil War stories especially fall into that category. I know such local stories often have a basis in fact, and the trick is in how you carefully connect them to fact. After all, I am only as good as my sources.

Bruce