Our Arklahoma Heritage: Well-traveled Missourian moved to Benton County and established a homestead in 1866

Pinkney Alexander Bozarth

Pinkney Alexander Bozarth was born on November 13, 1823, in Howard County, Missouri, the son of Jonathan Bozarth and Cyntha Gross. Jonathan, born in Virginia in 1780, had farmed successfully after moving west, first to Christian County, Kentucky, with his first wife, Nancy Alexander, and then to Missouri in 1818, where he bought 400 acres.

After Nancy's death, Jonathan married Cyntha McPhee, a Kentucky native of Scotch descent born in 1811, who joined the Christian Church and raised their six children: Lucinda, Pinkney, Elnora, Jonathan, Benjamin, and Elizabeth. Jonathan died in 1856, and Cyntha later moved to Collin County, Texas, where she died in 1885.

Bozarth grew up in rural Missouri, receiving a standard education for the time. At 27, he married Helen M. Terrell, born near Louisville, Kentucky, in 1830, also a Christian Church member. In 1850, Bozarth headed to California amid the Gold Rush, mining for a year before returning to Missouri.

The couple had eight children: Jonathan R., Alice, Cornelia, Emma, William F., Willis L., Mollie A., and Cynthia R., though Alice, Cornelia, Emma, and Cynthia died young .In 1861, the family relocated to Collin County, Texas, for farming.

Two years later, in 1863, Bozarth enlisted in the Confederate Army, volunteering for Colonel Barton Warren Stone Jr.'s regiment, the 2nd Texas Partisan Rangers, a cavalry unit also known as Stone's Regiment or Chisum's Regiment.

Formed that summer with about 1,000 men from North and East Texas counties, including Collin, the regiment was led by Stone, a Dallas attorney previously in command of the 6th Texas Cavalry, with Isham Chisum as second-in-command. Operating in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, spanning Texas, Indian Territory, Arkansas, and Louisiana, the unit specialized in scouting, raids, and quick strikes as partisan rangers.

By late 1864, horse shortages forced some companies to dismount and function as infantry. Bozarth's service centered on the 1864 Red River Campaign, a Confederate push to block Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks' advance on Shreveport, Louisiana. At the Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864, the regiment joined forces that ambushed Union troops south of town, causing roughly 2,200 Union casualties to 1,000 Confederate, halting the invasion.

The next day at Pleasant Hill, they supported attacks in a battle with about 1,500 casualties each side, leading to Banks' retreat.

Follow-up engagements included Blair's Landing, Monett's Ferry, Mansura, and Yellow Bayou, where the unit harassed Union withdrawals and guarded supplies. Bozarth's records note participation in Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and possibly Fort De Russy, though sometimes mislisted as Fort Donelson.

He served until the war ended, with the regiment disbanding before the June 1865 surrender amid Confederate defeat.

Postwar, in 1866, Bozarth moved his family to Benton County, resuming farming. Helen died there in 1871. In May 1873, he married Polly A. Berry, a widow born in Wilson County, Tennessee, in 1838, who had moved to Benton County that February with her son James from her prior marriage to Arnold Berry.

Polly's parents were Redden and Polly Farrington Fields, Tennessee natives. Bozarth, a Democrat, farmed in the county and was noted as a solid community member.

He died at 80 on December 6, 1903, in Garland Township, Benton County.