Honoring Troy’s veterans
Every Sunday through Veteran’s Day, The Record will publish brief profiles of the brave men and women honored by their family and friends with banners hung around Troy through the work of the Troy Military Banner Committee. To honor a veteran, contact the committee by email at troybanners@gmail.com or on Facebook at www. facebook.com.
The Rev. David Butler
Butler was born July 19, 1762, in Harwinton, Connecticut, and enlisted June 4, 1777, as a private in Captain Robert Warner’s company of the 3rd Connecticut Regiment of the Continental Army. By 1780, he had been promoted to corporal, and in 1783 appears to have been a colonel in the 1st Connecticut Regiment.
The regiment was redesignated as the Connecticut Brigade in June 1783 and reassigned to the Main Continental Army. The regiment was disbanded in November 1783 at West Point, and Butler was ordained a deacon and priest by Samuel Seabury, the first bishop of the Episcopal Church.
Rev. Butler married and moved to Troy, where he became the first rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Lansingburgh and also served at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Troy. He died July 11, 1842, at age 80, in Troy and is buried in the Trinity Episcopal Church cemetery in Lansingburgh.
John G. Morrison
Morrison was born Nov. 3, 1842, in Ireland and enlisted in the Union Army on April 25, 1861, in Lansingburgh, and on June 1, 1861, mustered into A Company NY 30th Infantry. Serving as coxswain on the USS Carondelet, Morrison was commended for meritorious conduct in general and especially for his heroic conduct and inspiring example to the crew in the engagement with the rebel ram Arkansas on July 15, 1862, on the Yazoo River.
When the Carondelet was badly cut up, several crew members killed, many wounded and others almost suffocated by escaped steam, Morrison was the leader when boarders were called on deck and the first to return to the guns and give the ram a broadside as she passed. His presence of mind in time of battle was reported as always conspicuous and encouraging, and he received the Medal of Honor for exceptional bravery. Morrison died on June 9, 1897, in New York City.
Howard Adams
Adams enlisted in the U.S. Army on June 1, 1917. in Schenectady
and entered World War I at age 17. He served as a private first class in Company D 105th Infantry in France and Belgium, fighting on
the Hindenburg Line, in the Battle of the Selle and in the 1015th Brigade attack on the Knoll.
Not yet 20 years old, Adams was discharged April 1, 1919, and came home to Lansingburgh, where he raised a family and never talked about his service.