ALONZO FULLER – 64th INFANTRYDIED AFTER THE WAR AT 32 YEARS OF AGE - In the summer of 1864, a forty-four-year-old blacksmith who was on the Draft Registration List in Warren County, paid eighteen-year-old Alonzo Fuller to be his substitute. Alonzo and seven other men were recruited in Plattsburgh for the 64th Infantry to fill their ranks when many of the 3-year men went home. Only enough veterans and new recruits were mustered to make up a regiment of six companies rather than the normal ten – A, B, D, E, G and H.The small group of men left Plattsburgh to go to the Petersburg battlefield. Most were young men who were substitutes for others. They were split between Companies G and H when they joined the 64th in the field.Their first engagement was at Hatcher’s Run in December. With winter approaching, Grant decided to make one last attempt to capture the Southside Railroad that supplied Petersburg. The Union forces were expected to take the Confederate trenches that were located along the tracks seven miles south of Petersburg. The battle raged all day, but Lee sent reinforcements and the Union forces did not achieve their goal.Fighting resumed in the same area in February and when Petersburg fell on April 2, 1865, the regiment joined the Appomattox Campaign in which they accrued their last forty-five casualties. All of the men who enlisted with Alonzo returned home unscathed, except for one, Newell Jangro, who was shot for desertion. Two of Alonzo’s brothers who had enlisted in other regiments, died in 1864.Alonzo returned home and married Ellen Lackey. Shortly after his return, most of his family left to go to Michigan to live, but he and Ellen remained in Warren County. He lived only until 1879 and was buried in the Union Cemetery in North Creek when he was thirty-one years old. Ellen lived until 1926 and was buried with him.Gideon Mead, for whom Alonza substituted, died in Glens Falls in 1873, when he was fifty-two.
