Col. J. J. Dickison, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 11.2, Florida
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[20] was in possession of the State, and reorganized into a regiment to be mustered into the Confederate service as the ‘First Florida infantry regiment.’ These companies were respectively commanded by Captains Anderson, Amaker, Cropp, Powell, Hilton, Baker, Bradford, Gee, Myers, Lamar and Bright.

The organization of the regiment was effected and field officers chosen. Capt. J. Patton Anderson was elected colonel; William Beard of Tallahassee, lieutenant col-onel; and Thaddeus A. McDonell of Gainesville, major. They were ordered to report at Pensacola to General Bragg, who on the 8th of March, 86, had been appointed brigadier-general in the provisional army and assigned to duty in Florida, with headquarters at Pensacola. On the 5th of April, 1861, they began their march, a dispatch being forwarded by Theodore W. Brevard, adjutant-general of Florida, that about 580 men belonging to the counties east of the Chattahoochee river would take steamers at that point for Columbus, where transportation and subsistence would be expected. The companies on the west side of the river would march through.