The service record for Joshua Preston with the 17th Alabama Regt suggests that he had problems with authority and discipline. I wouldn't have offered this except that you mentioned him being regarded as a "character". Sometimes people like that have issues in the military or other authority-based organizations.

Rececca Williams Preston was buried at Pineville Methodist Cemetery in Monroe County. Her Find-a-grave memorial reads, "Daughter of Wiley Williams. Wife of William Booker Preston. Mother of Margaret Elizabeth Preston Roberts."

I've been unable to locate the Preston family on the 1870 census, but she and her children are reported on the 1880 census of Monroe County AL.

Joshua and Elizabeth Andress Preston appear on the 1880 census of Falls County TX.