Lives Between the Dimensions

Another Chapter of Our Story By Keith Wayne Ragan    The Civil War in Wayne County, Missouri was not fought with bugles, swords, and spotless uniforms.   It has been said to be, by several historians, the seat of the bloodiest guerrilla warfare of any arena of the Civil War in the United States..   Pretty much everyone knew everyone else.   If they weren’t neighbors, they knew each other from extended family alliances, trips to the general mercantile, the sawmills, the gristmills, blacksmith shops, or church or arbor gatherings.    The militias that were formed for both sides were often composed of those that advocated slavery and/or had strong ties to Southern ancestry, vs. those that did not.   Just as often, the alliances chosen were simply community or neighborhood commonalities.   The old locales of the Ojibway and Lost Creek communities, for instance, were not seats of slavery, their immediate ancestry were not prosperous owners of vast plantations that e