From Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical by Smith and DeLand
Chicago: Donohue 7 Henneberry, Printers and Binders, 1888
p. 219

WILLIAM R. DeLOACH, Judge of the Probate Court of Sumter County, was born at the town where he now resides, in the year 1842.

His father was the late Dr. A. B. DeLoach, a native of Tennessee, and his mother was, before marriage, a Miss Roby, of the State of Georgia.

William R. DeLoach finished his educational training at Professor Tutwiler’s excellent institution at Greene Springs, Ala., and at the outbreak of the late war promptly enlisted as a private soldier in the Southern Army. As a member of the Army of Virginia, he participated in many hotly contested engagements, and upon his person bears several scars in commemoration of Cold Harbor, Chancellorsville, Antietam, etc.

Late in the war he was transferred to the Western Army, and became a captain in Gen. Forrest’s cavalry. At the close of the hostilities, he returned to his native place and was some time afterward elected to the office of Tax Assessor, a position that he held for ten consecutive years. In 1880 he was elected to the Probate Judgeship, and re-elected in 1886.

Judge DeLoach is a man of high standing in the community where his life has been spent. He is a modest, unostentatious, wide-awake, progressive citizen; enjoying the confidence and esteem of the good people among whom he resides. Such is the tribute paid him by one of the best-known citizens of Alabama. In 1867, our subject was married to Susan T. Gibbs, a daughter of the late Charles R. Gibbs, a colonel in the War of 1812.