Zachariah Reaves Speights

A farmer in Huddleston, he joined the "Red River Rebels" in Rapides Parish and enlisted with them on 2 August 1861 in New Orleans as Corporal in Company B, First Louisiana Infantry.

He was wounded by a shell and captured in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was sent to Fort McHenry in Baltimore and paroled there on 14 October, then exchanged at Aiken's Landing, VA on 10 November 1862. He was given a furlough to January 1863, but did not return to duty. He was reduced to Private and was listed as a deserter by May 1863.

He was living with his sister Mary Jane and her family on their farm in Sabine County, TX by the US Census of 1880.

Service from Booth,1 who has his birthplace as Georgia. Details from family genealogists. His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of his wartime, (1 January 1863?) handwritten will, in which he lists "negroes, land, horses, cattle, hogs and house hold and kitchen furniture", to be left to his sister Mary Jane Speights Clifton (1839-1904).

09/27/1837 in LA

11/18/1882; burial in Speights Cemetery, Sabine County, TX