Thank you very much for your response and for the wealth of information provided. In my limited research in the Ancestry.com collection of Civil War records, I found my Ovide Baptiste Doumonge attached to a "King's Btty". Is this King's Battery? Battalion? Does this open the research further? The Ancestry.com rcords show him captured and released twice.

Also, could Ovide have filed for a pension? What qualified former Confederates for a pension? How can I research this?

Ovide was the son of prosperous French sugar planters whose plantation was at Irish Bend on Bayou Teche. He was a first cousin to my 2nd Great Grandfather, was in their wedding in Dec 1860 in Memphis, and was the namesake for one of my 2nd Great Grandfather's children. After the War, there are no longer resources to farm cane along the Teche, so the family somewhat disperses. My branch of the family were Irish planters from Tennessee, who were brought to Louisiana a generation earlier than the War by the Colonial government in Louisiana to farm. Hence the name "Irish Bend". My branch leaves after the War for north Mississippi/south Tennessee and later to Texas, where 2 generations are raised without knowing their full heritage. Information on Ovide's service in the War helps us to fix him in time, and gives us more information to mine. We're hoping to follow those records into the Reconstruction years in order to understand what life was like for the residents of the Teche between 1865 and 1890.

Thank you again for the help, and I would appreciate any guidance you may have for me in my quest.

Trudy Allen