Dr. J.H. Davidson, grandson of Sarah Ann Brown, related a story from Uncle Zeke, who told him that he had shot Major General Nathanial Lyon, (Union), during the battle of Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, Missouri in the Civil War. Uncle Zeke said, "I had a bead on him and I never missed anything I had a bead on yet." The above given to the Francis L. Brown family by Mrs Maurice F. Kennedy who was Ruth Richardson of Gilliam.
Ezekial was educated at the county schools and at the Masonic College, in Lexington, Missouri."In 1853, he took the gold fever, and struck out for California, and with his brother-in-law took a drove of cattle over the plains to California and came near starving to death in the passage of the Nevada mountains. He remained in the west until (1867?), when he returned home on horseback, without having made much of a fortune, as he was sick the last three years of his stay in California." Ezekial had five children, only two were alive in 1881.
The above from the "History of Saline County" published in 1881.
Submitted: Kevin Pickard