The second revolutionary war burial in the Brush cemetery is James Vanderburgh. Like Samuel Ludington, his time in Bovina was relatively brief. James was born in 1758 in Beekman, Dutchess County, NY. In April 1776, he joined the company of Captain Durling, re-enlisting in 1777 and 1779. He was a guard over military stores in the Town of Beekman and participated in the taking of two robbers or, “cow boys as they were usually called, named Weeks and Ackerly.” They actually were British spies and were hanged at Poughkeepsie in April 1781. The whole time he was in service, as he later noted in his pension application, he did not attend to any civil pursuit, saying that “his business was solely that of a soldier…”
While in service, he found time in October 1779 to marry Jane Rosecrans. After the war, he settled in Columbia County, where he filed for his Revolutionary War pension in 1831. His pension was $40 a year.
One of the people writing to support his application wrote: “Mr. Vanderburgh is an honest & very respectable old man, all who know him feel a very deep interest in the success of his application because he is poor & meritorious. It would afford me very great pleasure to be able to take home with me a certificate that he is to be one of the recipients of his Country’s bounty and thus gladden the heart of the good old patriot.”
We don’t know when he came to Bovina but by 1840, he and his wife were living in Bovina with their son Clarence. James died later that year, as did his wife. He’s buried in the Brush cemetery, next to what is now the Bovina library, as likely is his wife, though her grave is not marked.
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