DAVID WEATHERBY -- 16th INFANTRY and 2nd VETERAN CAVALRYCAPTURED AT SALEM CHURGH - When the Civil War came along, David Weatherby was working as a bloomer in Saranac. He was living with his parents and, as soon as the regiment was formed, David enlisted in the 16th Infantry a month after Lincoln's call for troops.On the afternoon of the 16th day of April 1861, Pliny Moore, grandson of General Benjamin Mooers who had commanded the militia in the battle of Plattsburgh on September 11, 1814, called upon his friend, Franklin Palmer, and suggested that steps be taken to raise a company of volunteers under the President\'s call. The proposition was agreed to, and a notice was printed and circulated in the village of Plattsburgh and adjoining towns.David stayed with his regiment in northern Virginia and the Peninsula and, after the Seven Days' Battles went north to Maryland and fought at South Mountain and Antietam. After Fredericksburg in December 1862, they stayed in the area and was captured at Salem Church, just a few miles southwest of Fredericksburg. He was hastily paroled and returned to the North Country.In July 1863, David joined the 2nd Veteran Cavalry at Plattsburgh and, after patrolling the capital for a few months, went to Louisiana for the Red River Campaign. The regiment was mustered out at Talladega, AL, exhausted from crisscrossing the Mississippi several times and fighting in Florida and Alabama.When he came home, he resumed his job as a bloomer. He married and had children and lived to the age of 63 and died in the summer of 1903. His barn died that summer and maybe it was too much of a shock for him. The Plattsburgh Republican of July 18, 1903, noted -- "David Weatherby's barn burned Sunday morning, also a horse, some hay, a stove, and other things stored there were consumed. About 2"30 am, the noise awoke Mr. Weatherby, and at that time, the barn was all aflame and about to collapse. Planks of the bridge crossing the gutter to the barn were found to be taken out. This leads many to believe the fire incendiary."David died on August 4th, just twenty-two days after the fire and was buried in the Independence Cemetery in Saranac.
