EUGENE McCREADY -- 118th INFANTRYALFRED McCREADY -- 26th CAVALRYBURIED IN SAGINAW, MI - In the over 2,000 soldiers we have highlightedon this page so far, this is the first soldier whose hair color is notedas "auburn" on his Muster Roll Abstract. It also says he was born inBeekmantown, was 20 years old, had grey eyes, a florid complexion andwas 5' 5" tall. When Eugene enlisted in the 118th Infantry on August7, 1862, he was living at home with his widowed father, John McCready inBeekmantown.Eugene was mustered into Company B, under Captain Levi Dominy, with 84other privates from Ellenburg and Saranac as well as the Chazy area. Theregiment left from the dock in Plattsburgh, and travelled by steamer andtrain to the Baltimore, MD, area where they spend a couple of monthsguarding railroad installations.The regiment didn't get to the battlefield until April 1863, after theyleft their duties in the defenses of Washington. They remained on thelower Virginia Peninsula and, at the end of the year, found themselvesspending the winter at Newport News.Starting in March 1864, Eugene and the 118th were sent to thePetersburg/Richmond area where they encountered heavy fighting. At themuster at the end of October, he was listed as being in the hospital atFortress Monroe where he spent the rest of the war.While he was in hospital, his brother Alfred enlisted in the 26th or1st Frontier Cavalry on January 27, 1864, in Plattsburgh. The brothersgot home within a couple of weeks of each other -- Eugene in late June1865, and Alfred on July 6th.Soon after the war, Eugene and his father with a couple of other familymembers moved West. Alfred decided to stay in Clinton County. When hedied in 1917, he was buried in the West Plattsburgh Union Cemetery.Eugene died in 1915 and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Saginaw,MI. Their father remarried in 1880 in Illinois, and he was buried inRockford, IL, in 1900.
