Nitpicks For The Night of the Returning Dead

I wasn't going to nitpick this show, but...in "The Night of the Returning Dead," it's stated that the murder victim, Colonel Beaumont Carson, whose ghost was supposedly riding around the area, fled with his family at the threat of the impending Civil War. How then could his ghost have a rank as Colonel and a full Confederate uniform if he was never in the war?

Also, he is said to have left 13 years earlier. The war broke out in 1861, which would make this 1874. In Season 1 it was stated that the year was 1874, so at the very least they were staying in 1874 for a long time. This is not as serious an error as in Little House on the Prairie, which tended to skip around two or three years backwards or forwards, or Daniel Boone, which skipped around twenty or thirty years from episode to episode, just a noticeable nitpick.

Tiny nitpick, would the nice embossed writing seen inside the hat brim have been available in 1874 or was the equipment for that invented later?