I wondered about that Van Horn/Dorn bit myself (and there's always the chance I mistranscribed it, subconsciously sticking in the general...). I also wasn't sure if this was the same bunch you were trying to track. But the article was second hand, at best, routing from Huntsville to Natchitoches, and you know how newspapers can be, then and now. I don't think the Huntsville Item survived, but you might want to double check all surviving Texas newspapers from that time period to see if the letter was reprinted anywhere else. I didn't pick it up, but I may have missed it, or got distracted with my main focus on homefront items.

Vicki Betts