Judy, Mr. Martin's first post is accurate for the Consolidated Crescent Regiment. It was in the same brigade as the 18th Louisiana and 28th Louisiana and they all moved around together. After the 1864 Red River Campaign, the brigade was ordered to Arkansas and passed through Monroe on September 16, 1864. Your ancestor must have joined the regiment while it was on the march. After spending the winter in Camden, the brigade returned to Louisiana in February 1865 by way of Minden and camped on Bayou Cotile, near Alexandria. When the men received word of Robert E. Lee's and other army's surrender, hundreds of men simply went home. Those that remained with the Consolidated Crescent Regiment marched to Mansfield and were officially disbanded on May 19, 1865. Your ancestor must have been one of the die hard Rebels who stayed until the bitter end. A good book to consult is Felix Pierre Poche, A Louisiana Confederate: Diary of Felix Pierre Poche, ed. Edwin C. Bearss (Natchitoches, La., 1972). It covers the movements of the brigade in which the Consolidated Crescent Regiment served.

One point on which your family's oral history is inaccurate is the train ride. There was no train service from Mansfield to Alexandria in 1865.