Obediah was a deserter from the Confederacy during the Civil War. According to Olin Jarrett Jr’s version of the story, he was drafted, went through a long winter with the Confederate troops, and then decided it was time to go home and plow his fields when the spring came. He was of course caught and tried as a deserter.

The likelihood is that he would have been shot as a deserter, were it not for the intervention of his lawyer, who reasoned that (this was rather late in the conflict the Confederacy would be likely to lose the war. On this basis, the lawyer suggested to Obediah and to another soldier also arrested for desertion, the best plan was to delay the inevitable sentence of death via appealing the ruling. Obediah’s fellow deserter decided not to appeal and was executed. Obediah decided to take the appeal route and survived. In gratitude, Obediah named a son Zebulon after the lawyer, Zebulon Vance, who went on to be a Reconstruction-era governer of North Carolina.

Confederate army: enlisted in Madison County NC 5/14/1862; present or accounted for until transferred to Co. 1, 65th Regiment NC Troops (6th Regiment NC Cavalry) 8/3/186340

Transferred from Co A 5th Battalion N.C. Cavalry 8/3/1863; deserted at Concord, TN 8/7/1863, reported on 4/30/1864; on 8/31/1864 muster roll with the remark “Absent in arrest at Kunston NC”; accounted for as present in arrest from 6/31/1864 through 10/1864; captured at Goldsboro, NC on 3/23/1865 and took the Oath of Allegiance on the same day41