I ran into this years ago and always assumed they were headed home. I just revisited the topic as I work my draft, and thought I'd see if I could find out anything about how they were captured. At this point my assumption did precisely what assumptions usually do.

The state of Tennessee says Civil War Richland Station is now Portland, which is north of Nashville, almost in Kentucky. The rail route to Columbus that these men used to travel north in '61, and might have used to travel home in '63, ran through Knoxville and Chattanooga, nowhere close to Nashville. Besides that, didn't Federal troops have the Nashville area pretty well locked down by May 1863? Rosecrans was massed around Murfreesboro, prepping for Tullahoma, right? If my lieutenants were captured at Richland Station, they were not headed home. They may have been captured somewhere else, then brought there and recorded as POWs there, but that is pure speculation. Maybe someone has information that would change it from speculation to something else, or have evidence of something else entirely, evidence being the key thing

Henderson stated incorrectly that Klink was captured at Richland, Pa. His and O'Keefe's CMSRs put their capture at Richland Station, Tn. If either had been transferred, it is odd that their prison records (CMSRs) continue to put them with the 17th Georgia

thanks,

Andrew Johnson