WILSON ALLEN, Jr. – 118th INFANTRYWHICH WAY IS WHICH? - Wilson Allen, Jr., a 23-year-old farmer enlisted in the newly-formed 118th Infantry on August 11, 1862, in Ausable and mustered in as a private in Company K on August 30. The muster in Plattsburgh included men from all over Clinton, Essex and Warren Counties. Wilson’s company was recruited in Ausable, Black Brook and Peru, so he knew many of the 50 or so men who enlisted in Clinton County on that day in the 118th. In the NY Adjutant General’s roster, Wilson is listed as both Wilson Allen, Jr. and Allen Wilson, Jr. – a problem that was to plague him throughout his military career which ended when he mustered out on June 2, 1865, as Wilson Allen and on June 4, by Order of the War Department, as Allen Wilson.In April 1863, the 118th was at the Siege of Suffolk after serving in the defenses of Washington since September 1862. They fought through Virginia until the end of July. They then returned to Yorktown and Norfolk, VA, where, from November 4, 1863, Wilson was detailed as a clerk to the Provost Marshal’s Office. There is no record of his return to the regiment, but it shows he was at all the musters after his detail.It may be that Major John L. Cunningham who wrote the history of the 118th, and who was often detailed to the Provost Marshal’s Office, took any literate soldier with him to serve as clerk. Often they had to inspect prisons and this is what Cunningham wrote in 1865 - “We found most of the prisons dirty and crowded, and, worse, found many prisoners, soldiers and civilians against whom there were no charges of record — probably arrested and forgotten. Others were being held on such trivial charges as to have been expiated by their time of imprisonment. We found a few women prisoners, they being well cared for, but arrested mostly on suspicion of furnishing information or aid to the enemy.Our report recommended reform in the case of the prisons and a wholesale release of prisoners, and our recommendations were approved.” We suppose that Wilson wrote many such reports.After the war, the Ausable Town Clerk’s Report on the return of Civil War soldiers in 1865, gives the name of his parents as Wilson Allen and Sarah Parrot – partially right, she had been married to Joseph Parrott who died, and remarried in 1835 to Wilson Allen, Sr. Sarah’s maiden name was Washburn. Wilson Jr. married Eleanor O’Brien in about 1860 and sometime between then and the time he returned from war, she died. He then married Scottish-born Mary Anne Reid in 1865 in Norfolk, VA. Did he meet her there while he was on detail? In 1871, Mary Anne left the farm and returned to Virginia to visit her parents and gave birth to her daughter, Virginia, there. Wilson applied for a pension on March 9, 1892, and in 1897, ran on the Democratic ticket for Assessor in the Town of Ausable.
