Column: Clinton County's one percent

As part of the Sesquicentennial Commemoration of the American Civil War, the Clinton County Historical Association decided to publish a book on the men who enlisted in Clinton County between 1861 and 1865. After our research, we were surprised to find that approximately 5,000 soldiers were said to have enlisted in Clinton County – about 1% of soldiers who enlisted in New York. Geri Favreau, who was CCHA Board member at the time, agreed to chair the book committee in 2011. Her friend, Bob St. John, the Commander of the Legion in Rouses Point, and County Commander during the Sesquicentennial, had done some research on the men from the Champlain/Rouses Point area, and he became part of the Civil War Book Committee. Major Bill Gliddon (U. S. Army Ret.) who was on the board at the New York State Military Museum joined as an advisor. Vickie Evans, a CCHA volunteer and Civil War reenactor with a great interest in the subject, agreed to work with us. Helen Nerska, the President of the Association accepted the opportunity to participate, as did the Director of the Museum, Melissa Peck. I, a CCHA Board member, consented to be a researcher and editor for the book. The committee met often to discuss such subjects as who to include in the book, what to include, and the format including the cover. We decided that Bloated Toe Publishing should print it. It was ultimately decided that we should include only those men who enlisted in our county. This excluded a few men who were born in Clinton County but enlisted elsewhere. Interestingly, it included men from other counties who were listed as enlisting here – mainly from Essex and Warren Counties. To find the enlistees, we went to the New York State Military Museum's website and read all the Adjutant Generals Rosters for New York State. We perused the 248 Infantry regiments, some of which were raised for 30 days, others which had a 3-year life or various terms of enlistment in between. We also went through the 38 Cavalry regiments, 3 Engineer regiments, 1 Sharpshooter regiment and the 76 Artillery regiments and Independent Batteries. The first men who enlisted in the county did so in May 1861, within two weeks of Lincoln's call for 75,000 men and the last to enlist did so in March 1865 for what the Army thought would be the last assaults on Petersburg and Richmond. At least 40 percent of the men we found had French-Canadian ancestors. Men with Irish antecedents accounted for the next largest group. There were two men who stated they were "half-Indian" whose fathers were mountain men in the West. One man was listed as black – his ancestor was Martin Tankard, the glass mix master from Redford. Underage boys who wanted to enlist often went to Vermont where no one knew them. We used Bob St. John's list of men as the basis for the book and added the 1865 remarks from the Town Clerks' Offices, if available, to further personalize the entries. Some Town Clerks recorded more interesting details than others when the soldiers or their families came in to report. The committee decided we needed to show a list of Towns in the county and include a list of regiments represented from each town. Geri Favreau insisted on an index, which we included – 34 pages with three columns of names on each. Geri also researched the men who are buried in the county and found over 1,200 soldiers' gravesites which are in the book. Another thing she added was the county's Grand Army of the Republic Posts and their locations. In addition, there are three pages of resources to facilitate research. The list of soldiers from Hurd's History of Clinton and Franklin County was recorded at the end of each Town's list of soldiers. When all the parts of the book came together, it was 606 pages long. In cooperation with the publisher, we decided to have it presented in two wire-bound volumes. One hundred sets of books were published in 2014 with help from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership and the New England Interstate Pollution Control Commission. All of our Town Historians, who had given us lists of their soldiers, were given a set for their offices. In January 2015, to honor our soldiers, we decided to use Facebook to post a vignette each day. So far, we have added almost 3,000 of their stories to "Clinton County, NY, Civil War Record – 1861 to 1865." In the future, we hope to add these accounts to our website. Other Civil War Sesquicentennial projects sponsored by CCHA were stamp cancellations, Civil War camps and presentations to various groups by museum volunteers and interns such as Aubrie Bourgeois, a PSUC history major. In memory of the local soldiers who helped capture John Wilkes Booth with the 16th NY Cavalry, we sponsored a tour of their gravesites given by the Saranac Historian Jan Couture. She invited John Carson, the author of the history of the regiment, "Chasing Mosby, Killing Booth," to give a talk. If you see small yellow stickers on stones in local cemeteries, it is thanks to Eagle Scouts John Pelkey and Matt Orr who placed them, with permission of the cemetery associations, on soldiers' monuments as part of their project. The county's American Legion sponsored the stickers. The Civil War books are on view at all times at the museum. Come in to check them out, you may find an ancestor who was in the War of the Rebellion, as they called it. Often CCHA may have other papers, photos or artifacts that belonged to them, just ask. Our Facebook page includes the stories of the last two of Clinton County's soldiers. They died in 1938, and the Plattsburgh Daily Republican of February 25th carried the story - "Rifle fire and a bugle call tomorrow will sound a farewell for Clinton County's last Civil War veteran. Benjamin Newell Curtis, 97, commander of Walter A. Benedict Post No. 366 G. A. R., of Plattsburgh, who died Wednesday night at North Ferrisburg, VT. Tomorrow, he will be accorded full military rites. Born at Saranac April 11, 1841, he enlisted in the Union Army, on August 25, 1864, with Company "B" of the 118th New York Volunteers. Later, he was transferred to Company "H" of the 96th New York Volunteers. He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1865. In what battles of the war, he saw action is not known, since records are not now available. He died at the home of a son, Merton Curtis, after an illness of approximately two months. His death came less than two weeks after that of Joseph Caderet, 90, at the time the only other remaining Civil War veteran in the county." CCHA is proud of the book we published to honor the men who enlisted in Clinton County and the men who contributed to the outcome of the Civil War. — By Julie Dowd, Historian and Clinton County Historical Association Trustee Emeritus

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Column: Clinton County's one percent

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