Martin Burke, Prisoner Of War

Some gentlemen of this city, who were on a chance visit to Cairo the other day, inform us that Colonel Martin Burke, formerly of St. Louis, was among the prisoners who were brought to that place from Memphis on the steamer Fairchild.  He was en route, together with all the other commissioned officers, to Johnson's Island, in Sandusky harbor, and the privates were to be conveyed to prison quarters at Alton.

Our informants had but a moments conversation, during which he confirmed the report that Colonel Hugh A. Garland, Jr., his predecessor in command of the regiment, had been killed during one of the battles between the forces of Hood and Thomas in Tennessee.  The prisoner himself was in robust health, having fully recovered from a severe wound in the lungs received several months ago in the vicinity of Atlanta.

His family is residing in the State of Alabama.  They learned nothing of the particulars of his late capture, and heard no mention of officers or men of the regiment, other than Col.  Garland.  He promised to write to some of his St. Louis acquanintances after reaching his prison destination.

The regiment which is thus deprived, for the third time, of its leader, was made up in great part of St. Louisans, and was one of the first to enter into the rebel cause from Missouri.  It has been three years and a half of hazardous service for disunion and cannot, at this late day, embrace many of its original members within its rank.  J.H. Bowen, the first Colonel, was promoted to a Generalship, and died not long after the surrender of Vicksburg.  Col. Garland was a young lawyer of this city..

-Missouri Republican, January 18, 1865