The Zachariah O'Neal House was the home of the Zachariah O'Neal family and remains one of the few wartime structures still standing in much of its original form in Dade County, as well as the only such structure in the city of Trenton. It is a rectangular single-pen log structure with corner timbering, hewn logs, and a brick chimney at one end; although the north end shows some weathering, it has a new roof and is in reasonably good overall condition. During the war it stood on a working farm that also would have included a barn, cribs, and other outbuildings, and while there is no record of wartime camps in the area, such features could be present. Its location some distance from the railroad and outside wartime Trenton spared it from being burned when General Ewing was in the area. In 1860, Zachariah O'Neal was a prosperous fifty-six-year-old farmer living with his forty-six-year-old wife, having come to the area about fifteen years earlier from South Carolina. Their household included a twenty-one-year-old son who was a carpenter, an eighteen-year-old son who was a farm laborer, and four daughters ages sixteen, fourteen, ten, and seven, with the two youngest girls attending school in Trenton. The sons, Thomas J. and James A. O'Neal, served as privates in Company E of the 10th Regiment, 3rd Brigade of the Georgia State Troops from mid-1861 to May 1862, then enlisted as privates in Company F of the 34th Georgia Infantry Regiment of the Confederate Army, commanded by Captain William E. Brock and made up largely of men from Trenton. Both served in the Jackson and Vicksburg campaign, along with three cousins in the same company, and all were captured by the Federal Army at the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. After being paroled and told to return to their units, Thomas and two cousins were unable to do so. James A. O'Neal rejoined his unit, was captured at Tunnel Hill, Georgia, on May 13, 1864, spent the rest of the war in prison, and was released at Camp Morton, Indiana, on May 22, 1865. J. W. O'Neal also rejoined his unit, was promoted to Second Lieutenant, and remained with the army until the general surrender at Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865.

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller