The New York National Guard will honor a former president by laying a wreath at his grave site Friday morning in Columbia County.
New York Army National Guard Brigadier General Raymond Shields will mark the 232nd birthday of President Martin Van Buren by laying a wreath at Van Buren's grave site in Kinderhook. A marker on Kinderhook's Hudson Street indicates the site of the Van Buren family tavern, where the president-to-be was born in 1782. He is buried in the family plot at the Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery. Van Buren served in the White House from 1837 to 1841. He was the first president from New York and the only president whose first spoken language was not English. It was Dutch.
