According to family history, Jesse Baker fought alongside his father, John, and half-brother Lewis Griffie Thornton with Fristoe’s Regiment, Freeman’s Brigade, Captain Meadow’s company during the War of Northern Aggression. Jesse 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), Jesse 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 October 16, 1864 of chronic diarrhea. 

Sadly, his father, John, suffered the same fate.  John was also captured during the Searcy County skirmish of July 4, 1864 and confined to the Union Military Prison in Little Rock, Arkansas.  John died of chronic darrhea on December 4, 1864.