In 1862, by an act of Congress, the Enrolled Missouri Militia was organized specifically for men in the state who were willing to enlist in the service but did not want to leave the state to fight the Confederates......Such was Company K of the 47th and it was in existence from August 1862 until July 1864. They were not in actual service all the time, but would be home a month or two in the wintertime and stationed at Iberia. There was a fort built in Iberia during those days of the 1860s where the old Farnham Store and Lumberyard was once located.

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My great, great grandfather, John Levi Whittle, enlisted in Company K of the 47th E.M.M. on 21 August 1862, only 8 days before the Elsey Farm Fight. He was a Miller County farmer, 36 years old, with a young wife, Nancy Jane (Keeth), and three children including Josephus, Elizabeth, and Analiza. Another child was expected in February 1863. He and his family were no strangers to this war because he had spent 4 months of active duty in the Osage Home Guards less than a year earlier.

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There were less than 7,000 people in Miller County at that time and very few really knew or understood what the fighting was all about. They were ready to protect their homes and families. As time went by, the county became divided and men's ideas changed and varied as they decided to take sides---some for the Northern cause while others were Southern sympathizers. Families and neighbors became enemies with brother sometime fighting brother. Bushwhacking became common throughout the countryside and no one was safe from the guerilla bands as they plundered the land with their burning, destroying, and killing anyone in their way.

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As the Rebels and the Unionists met on the Elsey Prairie, the battle began on 29 August 1862 and evidently only lasted one day. From the book, THE TILLEY TREASURE, by Jas. B. King (page 38-39) it is written: "On August 29th (1862), a small skirmish occurred four miles east of Iberia, Missouri. A force of 42 Union men, under Capt. Long (William), Co. G Enrolled Militia, attacked a Confederate Company . The Southern force was thought to consist of 125 men under Col. Robert R. Lawther. His unit was the 10th Missouri Cavalry from Shelby's Brigade......The Union force routed the larger Confederate force, which dispersed and fled. The Confederate loss was one man killed and three men who were wounded and taken prisoner. The Union force had one man, Lee Whittle (Levi), severely wounded. His wound was thought to be mortal."

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My ancestor, Levi Whittle, did indeed die from his 'mortal' wound suffered in that battle on Elsey's Prairie on August 29, 1862. Eight days after he enlisted in the Union army, he lay dead on that bloody battlefield which was about 7 or 8 miles from his home in southwest Richwoods Township.

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Levi Whittle is buried near the spot where he died on Elsey's Prairie. The cemetery where he is buried is called Billingsley Cemetery and it is my assumption he was the first person buried there which was near the battleground. The old cemetery overlooks "Battleground Hollow" west of the Big Tavern creek. I have had to speculate why Levi Whittle was buried in that lonely spot so far from his wife and children who were living in the Pleasant Hill community. Why was he not returned to his home and family for proper burial?

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For many years John Levi Whittle was in an unmarked grave, but about 1916, the U. S. Government issued the family a military grave marker. It was delivered to the Miles Carroll G.A. R. Hall at Iberia and was picked up by Levi's son, Josephus Whittle. Josephus and his youngest son, John Wilburn Whittle, and an old man whose name my Uncle Wilburn could not remember, placed the military stone at Levi's grave in Billingsley Cemetery about 54 years after his death........The stone still stands today in Billingsley Cemetery, permanently marking the final resting place of my Civil War ancestor.........

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