“It isn’t so bad as Indians would have been for they would have killed the women and children.” “I don’t consider it any favor,” she answered, “to be left behind.”

… And then five men rode into [our] yard, and the leader rode his horse right up on the piazza; each one seemed to have a position assigned them, one set fire to the stable, one set fire to the house up stairs setting fire to the husk mattresses on the bed and to things in the bureau drawers, one of them stayed sometime in the dining room arranging quantities of money that he had tucked away all over him, and the fifth was opening the trunks in the house that we hadn’t carried out. Then he and the one who had arranged his money went to the trunks out doors, and ransacked them, taking valuable dresses and gloves and everything that struck their fancy. One of the men just drove his heel through the tills of Arabella’s trunk. Oh, there was so much difference in them! That was the worse looking guerrilla of them all, his lower lip hung way down and out as he talked and he was half drunk.... [He] attacked Henry, he snapped his two pistols all around but they didn’t go off... when he found he couldn’t shoot him he just turned his pistol round and began striking Henry with the other end of it. Henry had on a thick Panama hat but the man cut through that and the blood ran down his face. Arabella tried to protect him and ran back and forth between Henry and the leader begging him to spare [him]. The leader said he had no control over the man, but he did speak to him and the man turned around a moment impatiently, letting go of Henry, and Henry ran at once through the house and out into the corn....

I had run down stairs to ask the leader not to burn the house. “Won’t you spare the house? Won’t you spare the house?” I asked. “We are just plain quiet people and have never done any harm.” He took off his hat and made a flourishing bow and said, “For your sake I will spare it.” But I couldn’t put out the fire not even when Arabella came to help; the husk mattress fell in pieces, we burned our hands and had to give it up and go down stairs. Then the leader told them to get onto their horses and be off; they all took off their hats and made us bows and said, “Now you know what we have been suffering down in Missouri!” …

All at once another man came up on horseback with a gun in his hand and we thought he was another guerrilla. “Are you on fire?” he asked. “Oh yes,” we said, “we’re all on fire,” for we thought that was what he wanted and we wanted to content him.

But he said, “Shall I help you put it out?” “What are you?” we asked. “Oh, I’m a Union man,” said he. So … Henry came out of the corn and he and the Union man put out the fires … [The raiders] had made dreadful havoc … A hundred and eighty were killed—there were seventy-five or eighty widows …

Of course it was a very sad time, everybody was poor together, but it was wonderful how we came up and all helped each other. The good Lord helped us. Some families lost two or three members and everything they possessed. About ten years afterwards the government paid for some of the losses. We got $1,000, what we put our loss at, though it was really a great deal more … But we didn’t mind about money, for all our lives were spared and we were all unhurt.