This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/ZNB.2ACI/942.1 Message Board Post: The Colley family is fictitious. There was no family by that name living in Ripley County at the start of the Civil War. The location given for the family is in the Beaverdam area of northeast Ripley County near the Butler County line on the Little Black river. Great poetic license is taken with the geography in this book . It is even more fictional in regard to local history. There is no record of a massacre of civilians, men, women and children by Federal troops at Pulliam's farm on Christmas Day, 1863. That skirmish freed 100 Union prisoners while 35 Confederates were killed. There were over 400 eyewitnesses, yet not one reported a massacre. It is wrong to put all the blame on the Missouri State Militia for the depradations. It can be argued that the other side was as bad if not worse and worse even were the bushwhackers. Readers should set aside the history and geography and concentrate on the romance the book offers. Ray Burson, Ripley County Historical Society