The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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CAPTURED IN THE NIGHT TIME
By S. C. Turnbo
It is seldom that a soldier ever forgets his capture and imprisonment if that should fall to his lot. If he was well treated, he has always a kind feeling for his captors. John Mahan, son of Isaac Mahan and who was a union man during the war, says that the first time he was taken a prisoner was in the fall of 1862. "I was a member of Captain Williams Piland’s company and this command with others were marching south one night. There were near 300 men in the whole command. I was with the advance guard of 25 men in charge of Major Wilder. Near ten o’clock in the night while we were marching along the road in the vicinity of the three tall hills in Baxter County, Arkansas, called the Brothers, we met a command of confederate cavalry which proved afterward to be a detachment of General M. M. Parsons men under Captains Wheat and Bevis, which resulted in a little fight in the dark and I think there was one man killed on each side and I and Jake Foster was captured by the enemy. The confederates took me and Foster to Yellville, Arkansas, and placed us in jail there for safe-keeping. There were several other prisoners confined in the Jail the same time we were. They kept us in here ten days, when I and Jake Foster and a man of the name of Tom Boles and another man whose name I have forgotten were taken out of the prison house and sent to Ozark, Missouri, under an escort of six men and exchanged for. I remember seeing Loranso J. Terry confined as prisoner in the jail house at Yellville while we were there and the last time I seen Mr. Terry, he was sitting down on the floor of the jail house with his back leaning against the wall of the prison."
Mr. Mahan said that the southern men who captured him were regular troops and they treated him well.
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