Robert B. Van Valkenburgh, US Congress

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Civil War Union Army Officer, US Congressman. A prominent member of the New Yorlk State Legislature before the Civil War, upon the outbreak of the conflict he administered a recruiting depot, and helped organize 17 New York regiments. In August 1862 he was comissioned Colonel and commander of the 107th New York Volunteer Infantry.

He led the unit first in the defenses of Washington, DC, then in the Army of the Potomac during the Antietam Campiagn, where in the Battle on September 17, 1862 he regment fought in its first action in the East Woods and along Hagerstown Pike. In October 1862 he was discharged from the Army and he resumed his Congressional seat, which he had been elected to as a Republican representing New York's 28th and 27th Districts in the United States House of Representatives (the colonelship of the 107th New York passed to another Congressman-Soldier, Alexander Samuel Diven). He served from March 4, 1861 to March 3, 1865.

After the end of his Congressional tenure and the War, he served as acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1865, as Resident Minister to Japan from 1866 to 1869, and as a Florida State Associate Supreme Court Justice from 1874 to 1888. Today his name can be found inscribed on the New York Memorial Monument on the Antietam Battlefield.