Archibald S. Dobbins

Archibald Stephenson Dobbins (presumably on or after 1878) was an officer of the Confederate States Army who commanded cavalry in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. Initially refusing to serve under Brigadier-General John S. Marmaduke after the Marmaduke-Walker Duel, Dobbins was court-martialed for insubordination.

Born in Maury County, Tennessee, Dobbins entered Confederate service in 1862 as a volunteer aide-de-camp to Major-General Thomas C. Hindman. That same year, Dobbins was commissioned a colonel of cavalry. Paroled as a prisoner of war at Galveston, Texas, on July 13, 1865, he went into the mercantile business in New Orleans. Moving without his family to Santarem, Brazil, in 1867, he settled two years later near Itaituba, where he opened a sawmill and gristmill. In 1878, he immigrated to the Patagonia region of Argentina where he was engaged in business. The circumstances surrounding Dobbins' death remain a mystery to this day.

Early life Dobbins was born in Maury County, Tennessee, to David and Catherine (née Gilchrist) Dobbins. Shortly after his marriage to Mary Patience Dawson, he moved to Coahoma County, Mississippi, then relocated to Phillips County, Arkansas, acquiring Horse Shoe Island Plantation, near Helena.

American Civil War

When Confederate Major-General Thomas C. Hindman was appointed commanding officer of the District of Arkansas in the summer of 1862, he brought Dobbins with him from Mississippi to Little Rock as a volunteer aide-de-camp on his personal staff. Following the Battle of Prairie Grove, he was appointed colonel of a new unit colloquially known as "Dobbins' regiment". Court-martialed at Camp Bragg, Arkansas, on November 23, 1863, Dobbins was found guilty of "disobedience of orders in the face of the enemy." President Jefferson Davis remitted the sentence of the court-martial and Dobbins returned to the Trans-Mississippi Department for the duration of the war. An article in the August 7, 1881, edition of The Standard, an English language newspaper out of Buenos Aires, states that eight Scottish colonists from Greenock had contracted with Dobbins five years earlier for their passage to Port Desire, Argentina.

Speculation on disappearance Theories about Dobbins' fate range from murder at the hands of Indians, a natural death in the Patagonia region of Argentina, to a desire to abandon his family.