Capt. Mitchell, who raised a Confederate company of cavalry here prior to the Carthage affair of July 6, 1861, took part in the skirmish at Dugg's Springs.  Subsequently, when addressing his command in the court-house square at Cassville, he would bring up this reminiscence of the campaign, telling his boys that on the occasion referred to he felt not a bit of fear, yet every moment thought of "gettin," which in the language of the times was understood to mean desert or run away.

It was the same captain who when ordering his command to mount would cry out, "Boys, get to your critters."  After Mitchell retired from the army a Federal scout took him 100 yards from his house, where they shot and killed him.

SOURCE:  Goodspeed's 1888 History of Barry County (reprint), p. 79-80.

NOTE

In March, 1864, James Sexton and Charles Carson, both members of the Stone Prairie Home Guard, were indicted in Barry County for stealing a horse from Griffith Mitchell about December, 1862.  At the same time, however, Mitchell himself was indicted “for combining by force to expel a portion of the citizens from their home in the State of Missouri...”  In September, 1865, the sheriff arrested Sexton on the theft charge, but could not find Mitchell to arrest him on the other charge.  No resolution of either case appears in the surviving records, although the theft case was still active as late as February, 1867. Whether this was the Mitchell referred to as "Capt. Mitchell" in Goodspeed's, or perhaps one of his family, is unknown to me.

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