William A. Fears (continued)

  Meanwhile, the fighting was still going on around Fayetteville, where Josiah and James were still stationed. In late October, Brooks and Brown attacked the town, but were driven off in a spirited fight. Then, as what remained of General Price’s rebel cavalry divisions passed by in early November, he detached General Fagan’s division to assist Brooks and Brown in attacking the town once more. The attack came on November 6, 1864. The First Arkansas Cavalry and a handful of Union militia held Fagan off until help arrived. However, during the action Josiah was again wounded, this time by the concussion of an artillery shell, which evidently aggravated his old lung condition.
In later years, Eb used to tell of the horrors of the prison camp, which was crowded and filthy. Food was short, and what there was wasn’t fit to eat. One of the guards, however, was a man whom Eb had known back home. Although some of the Arkansas men captured at Nubbin Ridge were exchanged and released earlier, Eb was not paroled and released until May 27, 1865, when the war was essentially over. Eb’s rejoined the regiment on June 23, 1865. William would also have been transferred back to Fayetteville from Fort Smith along about this time, because the regiment was collected at Fayetteville during the summer and mustered out of the Federal army on August 23, 1865.
William Anderson ("Billy") Fears did not live long after the war. Returning home, he married a neighbor girl, Mary "Polly" Riddle, whose three brothers had also served in Company A (one being killed in action), and fathered three children before dying of “fever” on June 28, 1868. Jim Branson, a long-time Crawford County resident who was just a youngster at the time, recalled that he was threshing wheat with his father Jesse (also a Union veteran) when a man came and told them that Billy Fears was dead. They shut down the thresher and went over to the Fears place to pay their respects.
Josiah Fears eventually lost the use of his wounded arm, and in 1884 died of lung disease brought on by his war wounds. James and Eb, however, lived into the 1930s. Their mother Catharine lived to be 89. Billy’s youngest son (my great-grandfather) lived with her for a time after leaving home. She and all four of her sons are buried in Salem Cemetery, just off Arkansas Highway 45, north of Cedarville, Arkansas.