PVT. BUDD SOMERS (A BEDSTUY HERO) (1918)
Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
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In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War.
We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park.
This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers.
PVT. BUDD RUSSELL SOMERS
“Budd” Russell Somers was born in Owego, New York, near Binghamton, on 3 March 1891. His family moved to Pennsylvania at some point before the century was out.
But, Somers would find himself back in Brooklyn sometime after 1910.
A “tool maker” at the John Johnson & Company – at 37th Street and 3rd Avenue – Somers was a tall and slender man with grey eyes and chestnut hair.
He had been courting Daisy Elizabeth Saxby when American involvement in the Great War became a reality, and so he did what many other young single men going off to war did – he married her. His marriage was the classic pre-war wedding, taking place less than five months before being “called up” in the draft.
When that event occurred, on 10 October, Somers boarded a train with thousands of other men to Yaphank, NY, for basic training. Upon completion of boot camp, he became a member of the 326th Infantry’s Machine Gun Company. By 29 April of 1918 he had landed on French soil, starting his Army service in an active war zone.
Although he listed his address as 716 Lafayette Avenue when he registered with the draft board before the war, Somers evidently moved his wife to 677 Decatur Street before he left for service – because this is the address where the news of Somers’ death was delivered to his young wife.
During the second phase of the Argonne campaign, Somers met his end in one of the many costly frontal assaults designed to break through the Hindenburg line.
Somers was killed in action on 12 October 1918. He was 28.
Somers was the eldest son of Eli and Anna Somers of Warren, Pennsylvania. His brother, Holmes Somers, also served in France, surviving the war to marry and have three children.
Pvt. Budd R. Somers is buried in Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in Romagne, France.
(To learn about the history of the “Victory & Peace” memorial, click HERE.)
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
