According to family history, John Baker fought alongside his son, John, and step-son Lewis Griffie Thornton with Fristoe’s Regiment, Freeman’s Brigade, Captain Meadow’s company during the War of Northern Aggression. John is listed as a private in Company F, under the command of Captain S. M. Elliott and Captain David C. Meadows.

Fristoe’s Regiment was officially organized in July, 1864 with 830 officers and men. It served in the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy. During General Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition it was attached to Colonel Thomas R. Freeman’s Brigade of Major General John S. Marmaduke’s Division.

According to the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas (Goodspeed Publishing, 1889), John Baker was captured during the skirmish in Searcy County, Arkansas on July 4, 1864 taken prisoner.  He was confined to the Union Military Prison in Little Rock, Arkansas where he died December 4, 1864 of chronic diarrhea. 

Sadly, his son, Jesse, would suffer the same fate.  Jesse was also captured during the Searcy County skirmish of July 4, 1864 and confined to the Union Military Prison in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Jesse died of chronic darrhea on October 16, 1864.