ALBERT VAN BUSKIRK -- 118th INFANTRYSIX FROM COMPANY B KILLED AT DREWRY'S BLUFF - There were 155 Van Buskirks in the Union Army -- most of them from the eastern states -- New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The Confederate Army had only one -- Clinton P. Van Buskirk from Winchester, VA, who ended up in a Union prison in Jacksonville, FL, after he deserted from the 19th VA Infantry.The only Vanbuskirk who enlisted in the 118th Infantry in Clinton County was Albert, who was born in Beekmantown in 1862. He was working in Ellenburg at the time of his enlistment, his parents Lorenzo Van Buskirk and Louisa Brown, having moved to Iowa to farm in the early 1850s.Albert was recruited by Lieutenant John Carter for Captain Levi Dominy's Company B on August 6, 1862, as a private and by the end of the month was mustered in as a corporal. The regiment left for Washington in September and didn't get to the field until April 1863, when they participated in the Siege of Suffolk. They stayed on the Virginia Peninsula until the end of the year and spent the winter of 1863/63 at Portsmouth and Newport News.They started 1864 with two minor battles before getting on transports at the beginning of May to travel up the James River to the Petersburg/Richmond battlefield. Several days of hard fighting followed and, on May 16, 1864, according to most records, Albert was killed at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff about 15 miles below Richmond. Jefferson Davis himselfThe Ellenburg Town Clerk's Records of 1865, indicate that he may have died while a prisoner at Andersonville in October 1864.The battle at Drewry's Bluff started at 3 am and, as the regiment's historian noted -- This date should be written in indelible ink instead of pencil to give some semblance of its probable deep and lasting record in our memory. Six men of Company B died at Drewry's Bluff.In September 1878, a pension was filed for in Lorenzo's name based on his son's service, however the petition was not granted because Lorenzo had died in 1855.
