BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FOSTER – 46th INFANTRYFOUGHT IN THE PETERSBURG AREA - During the spring and summer of 1864, the 46th Infantry had suffered over 100 casualties and in August and early September fifty men from the Plattsburgh area were recruited as replacement troops. One of the men was Benjamin Franklin Foster who at 18 years old enlisted as a substitute for William Henry Palmer of Moriah in Essex County.Almost as soon as he got to Virginia, he became ill and was sent to hospital. He finally joined his regiment in the field on January 24, 1865, while they were five miles east of Petersburg. On March 25th the regiment was engaged at Fort Stedman where they had two men killed and three injured. Four days later, the assault on Petersburg began and, after five days of fighting, the city fell. Soon after the fall, the regiment was ordered to Washington, where Benjamin was mustered out on June 3, 1865, at Delancy House in Washington.After the war, he returned to his parents’ farm in Moriah and, in later life, moved to Iowa where he applied for his Invalids Pension in 1891. William Palmer, for whom he substituted, died in 1907.
