Robert Ludwell Yates Peyton

Career By 1850, the 23 year old Peyton was an attorney and he and a 35 year old Ohio-born attorney boarded with merchant Squire Allen in Cass County, Missouri (near modern Kansas City). A decade later, he was among the dozens of people boarding with landlord W.J. Taylor in Harrisonville, the Cass County seat.

Missouri voters elected Peyton to the Missouri State Senate in 1858. He became one of Missouri's delegates to the Provisional Confederate Congress and afterwards won election to the Confederate States Senate.

On July 16, 1861, days after the victory of the Missouri State Guard commanded by Governor Claiborne F. Jackson over federal forces at the Battle of Carthage, Peyton organized a cavalry troop that became known as the 3rd Missouri cavalry, with Peyton as its colonel, but would resign that commission on December 13, 1861. He joined the Confederate States Army and died in Bladon Springs, Alabama on September 3, 1863, after catching malaria while defending Vicksburg, Mississippi.