DISAPPEARED AFTER THE WAR - The 118th or the "Adirondack Regiment", was recruited in Clinton Essex and Warren Counties. It organized in Plattsburgh in the summer of 1862 and was mustered into U. S. service to serve for three years. The regiment left Plattsburgh by boat with a complement of 1,040 men including Thomas Willson, who was born in 1839 in County Tyrone, Ireland. Thomas was mustered in as a private in Captain William Bailey's Company H on August 12th, and was promoted to corporal on August 30th, two days before they were to leave for the capital. There were eleven Wilson men in the regiment, but only William had the double "l", although in various records he used Wilson. Before the 118th got to Washington they spent a couple of months guarding railroads near Baltimore then, shortly after arriving, they were put on a flotilla of ships and spent April 0f 1863, at the Siege of Suffolk in the reserve brigade of the VII Corps of the Army of the Department of Virginia. From May to the end of July, the regiment was in Virginia and saw their first blood at South Anna Bridge on July 4th -- 11 casualties. They performed garrison and guard duty for several months at Yorktown, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Newport News, VA. Thomas spent a couple of months in the hospital at Fort Monroe at the end of 1863 but recovered to go the field in the spring. In 1864, they took part in the campaign against Richmond with Gen. Butler's Army of the James, being engaged at Port Walthall Junction, Chester Station, Swift creek. Proctor's creek, and Drewry's bluff. In the last-named battle, it lost 199 in killed, wounded and missing. It fought gallantly at Cold Harbor in June, when it lost 32 in killed and wounded. In the first assaults on Petersburg, it lost 21 killed and wounded. It was next severely engaged at Fort Harrison, where it lost 67 killed and wounded, and during the advance on Richmond by the Darbytown road in October its ranks were once more fearfully depleted, 111 being killed, wounded and missing. Still with the Army of the James in 1865, they were engaged without loss at the fall of Petersburg on April 2, 1865. It was on the skirmish line of the 3rd Division when Richmond was finally occupied. Thomas was mustered out at Richmond on June 13, 1865, as a sergeant and returned to Plattsburgh only to merge into the several hundred Thomas Wil(l)sons who were Union veterans of the Civil War.
