A former POW made his living as a musician |
An online
database of Union soldiers held for about six weeks at a prison in Georgia has
grown to 3,808, more than one third of the site’s population.
Through research,
online sites – such as findagrave and familysearch -- and the Andersonville
Departure Register, archaeologist Debbie Wallsmith has increased that number
from a listing of 399 prisoners who died at Camp Lawton.
Visitors at
Magnolia Springs State Park northwest of Savannah can assume the identity of a
POW at the state’s Camp Lawton History Center. They learn more about the experience of being at
Lawton and then find out that prisoner’s fate. The Confederate camp also was known
as Millen, a town a few miles away.
Exhibit hall at Magnolia Springs History Center (Ga. DNR) |
In a recent newsletter from the Georgia Historic Preservation Division, Wallsmith provided an update on her ongoing effort to learn more about the prisoners and their Confederate guards. She called the project an “obsession” in a 2014 interview with the Civil War Picket.
The average age of enlistment
for the Union captives was 24, although the range went from 15 to 45.
“Of 625 survivors with known
dates of deaths, 466 died before 1900, including 138 while imprisoned elsewhere
before the end of the war; and 10 others who died aboard the Sultana, a
steamboat that exploded on the Mississippi River while transporting soldiers
home.” One POW died in 1944.
Up to 10,000 Union men, most sent from the infamous Andersonville prison camp, were held at Lawton in late 1864 before
they were moved elsewhere. Death estimates range from 685 to 1,330. The
database includes more than 3,400 Lawton survivors.
Wallsmith concluded her
update with a summary of a few of the most famous Lawton prisoners, including
Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett, who killed John Wilkes Booth, and Peter “Big Pete”
McCullough, a Missouri soldier known as the “Hanging Judge of Andersonville”
for seeking punishment for six fellow Union prisoners who were part of the “Raiders,”
a group that preyed on comrades.
Cpl. Alexander T. Butler of
the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, Company B, (above) lived to be almost 75 and
married four times after returning home. Butler farmed after the war and
received a pension because of illness.
Eppenetus Washington
McIntosh of the 14th Illinois Infantry survived the Sultana disaster.
McIntosh “found it difficult
to stay in one place and spent most of the remainder of his life as a traveling
minstrel, and sold post cards that featured a drawing of his emaciated
appearance after being released from Andersonville,” Wallsmith wrote.
Wallsmith asks those with questions or possible
contributions to the database contact her at 770-389-7864 or debbie.wallsmith@dnr.ga.gov
Phil - where is the database? I've been looking, but haven't found it online.
ReplyDeleteI will ask about that. Some names are at the kiosk at Magnolia Springs State Park.
ReplyDeleteMs. Wallsmith says the database, for now, is available @ Magnolia Springs State Park or, you can contact her directly at email address above.
ReplyDeleteThe email does not work anymore. Any other idea where the database is kept?
ReplyDelete