Thank you for your replies. William, I am cleaning papers and found your December 2011 response to me about this. We had corresponded because I had gotten a clue from the Galveston News that mentioned Taylor as wounded and the report came from camp outside Washington.

I do have William A. Taylor's war records, and I do have the second edition of Dead Men Wore Boots. My Taylor didn't desert. He has a letter in the file saying he had gotten permission to go home to Clinton (now a hill outside Cuero) to check on his wife and son. He left for home in February 1864 and somehow rejoined the 36th before they arrived in Louisiana. I do not know exactly where William A. Taylor rejoined the 36th, but he was at Blair's Landing.

The March 1865 regimental return alleged he deserted, but his wife had already probated his estate in November and December 1864. Is this odd that his regiment wasn't aware he had died in Louisiana?

The only proof I have that William A. Taylor died in Louisiana is the probate record that says he died there (no date given) and a much later obituary of his only son that mentioned the father (William A. Taylor) dying in Louisiana during the war.