Tom Rafiner, a Jackson County native, continues his focused and dedicated journey to uncover western Missouri history. For ten years he has researched family and community histories buried in the border conflict and the Civil War. Tom’s first history, Caught Between Three Fires: Cass County, Mo., Chaos and Order No. 11, documented previously lost Civil War history. His latest, Cinders and Silence: A Chronicle of Missouri’s Burnt District 1854-1870, tells the story of how three western Missouri border counties plunged from prosperity to devastation and finally, to oblivion between 1854 and 1870. Tom's latest book is R.L.Y. Peyton: An American Journey, 1824-1863.
A sought after speaker and storyteller, he has spoken throughout Missouri and Kansas. Tom holds a B.A. degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Tom currently resides in Columbia, Missouri.
Tom is a member of the Civil War Round Table of Kansas City.
Be sure to check out Tom's website.
Here is a brief description of R.L.Y. Peyton: An American Journey, 1824-1863, published in 2020 by Burnt District Press.
R.L.Y. Peyton's journey from obscurity to the national stage and then to oblivion, is as unlikely as it is incredible. Born into the cavalier Virginia gentry, Lud's family migrated to Oxford, Ohio. He attended Miami University before getting a law degree at the University of Virginia. For 10 years he practiced frontier law in Harrisonville, Mo. Suddenly in 1854, inflamed by the Kansas - Nebraska Act Lud exploded onto the political stage. He represented western Missouri in the state senate, helped trigger secession and then served in the C.S.A. Senate. He died from malaria in Alabama in 1863. Peyton's journey is uniquely American, his life narrating Missouri's, and the country's, ante-bellum history.
This hardback biography contains 419 narrative pages. Twenty-five (25) original maps, eighty-five (85) photographs, twenty (20) newspaper clippings, and three original illustrations illuminate his life.
