Man up: At Andersonville and other Civil War prisons, captives resisted and coped in a number of ways. They asserted a new form of masculinity

Desperate to be free: Union prisoners tunneling (National Park Service)

Sgt. Maj. Robert H. Kellogg and his comrades in the 16^th Connecticut Infantry, like generations of American soldiers before them, believed the only manly death in war should occur on the battlefield.

But they would find their experience to be different as the Civil War wore on. The green regiment, chopped up at Antietam in September 1862, was captured in only its second engagement 19 months later in Plymouth, N.C.

Gone were the ideas of battlefield victories and fame. Kellogg realized their world had been turned upside down when the regiment surrendered in April 1864.

“On the morning of (April) 21st we awoke to new experiences. Instead of the calls to which we had -been wont to listen, and the labor we had been accustomed to perform, we were but passive beings, subject to the will of a conqueror,” Kellogg wrote in “Life and Death in Rebel Prisons,” published in March 1865 near war’s end.

The soldier could not have predicted the extreme privation and horror he would witness and endure at Andersonville prison in Georgia. He provided colorful details in his book, considered one of the best personal accounts about life and death at Andersonville.

Various photographs of Robert H. Kellogg (Museum of Connecticut History)

What Kellogg and soldiers from both sides experienced at prisons contributed to a change in the perception of 19^th-century masculinity, according to many scholars, including conflict archaeologist Ryan K. McNutt.

As McNutt pointed out in a paper and a lecture in November at Andersonville National Historic Site near Americus, the Victorian ideal of manliness was courage through sacrifice and action – a good death on the battlefield, should it come to that.

“The POW experience was the direct antithesis of this ideal: Capture was socially seen the same as surrender,” wrote McNutt (the men of the 16^th Connecticut said it was not their decision to surrender). “And the wartime experience of POWs in the American Civil War was passive, inactive – waiting. For exchange, for parole.”

The talk by the assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia Southern was titled “But Passive Beings, Subject to the Will of a Conquerer,” pulling the line from Kellogg’s book.

(At left, Father Peter Whalen prays for prisoners, Thomas O'Dea sketch, NPS)

As it turned out, men confined with Kellogg were not all that passive, McNutt told the November audience in the park visitor center. They resisted in a variety of ways, trying to survive while buttressing their sense of manliness.

Tries were usually futile. But they dreamed of escape

McNutt spoke about resistance at both Andersonville (Camp Sumter) and Camp Lawton, another Confederate prison site in Georgia. McNutt directs the GSU archaeological project at the latter site

Andersonville is the emblem of POW suffering at Union and Confederate camps during the Civil War. Of 45,000 men held there, 13,000 Union service members succumbed to horrible conditions. Rather than a quick battlefield death by a bullet or artillery round, they faced death on an hourly or daily occurrence. It could come at any time.

Themes of heroism through endurance, martyrdom and stoicism arose, McNutt argues.

Soldiers engaged in tunneling, trickery and barter with guards. They endured beatings and incidents of cruel treatment – all while trying to stand tall amid the misery.

“Attempting is just as important as being successful,” McNutt said of defiant acts. More than 80 tunnels were found at Andersonville. Only 30-40 men successfully escaped the prison, which held about 45,000 soldiers over its 13 months.

But that did not stop them from trying.

A National Park Service article about escape attempts includes a paragraph that gets at what McNutt and others have studied. By being taken captive, prisoners had to find other ways to “prove oneself” and disprove any notions of cowardice.

“As a result, many prisoners faced the choice of either returning home after the war to be received as failures, or to attempt a dangerous escape. Those prisoners at Andersonville and elsewhere who never successfully escaped would often invent escapes or escape attempts in order to validate themselves in the eyes of their society,” the NPS says. (At right, Thomas O'Dea drawing of escape attempts at Camp Sumter)

'Can this be hell?

Kellogg was 20 years old when he passed through the gates of Andersonville into the chaos and suffering.

"As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror…before us were forms that had once been active and erect -- stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin…Many of our men exclaimed with earnestness, 'Can this be hell?'" the sergeant wrote

The soldier survived Andersonville and was transferred after a few months to  prisons in South Carolina paroled in November 1864. He was a changed man.

Robert Kellogg (right) with Oscar Wiel (Museum of Connecticut History)

Kellogg tried to resume his career path as a druggist but found himself disconnected and isolated, according to an article in Zocalo Public Square. When a local deacon died, he wrote in his diary that he felt numb: “Death seems to have lost its solemnity in me since ‘Andersonville.’”

He later moved to Ohio and published his book. Kellogg worked for years to ensure “thousands of brave men” were not forgotten. He died in 1932. The Connecticut Historical Society has his diaries, letters to his parents and military service records, among other items.

The Museum of Connecticut History in Hartford contains numerous photographs of Kellogg and some information about this life. (Special projects curator Christine Pittsley was helpful while I researched this post.)

One of only a handful of photographs of Andersonville (National Park Service)

Mary Gorman, author of a book about the Andersonville Raiders and a member of the Descendants of Andersonville Prison Facebook page, says Kellogg’s is probably the best Andersonville memoir, drawing from his vivid diary.

“If you want to get the truest picture of Andersonville, stick mostly with diaries and the memoirs published within the first 5 years” after the war, Gorman wrote when I asked followers of the Facebook page about Kellogg.

McNutt concluded his paper outlining the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by Civil War prisoners.

“The restructuring of masculine identities, the resistance both physical and symbolic, the creation of crafts and games, such as chess pieces found under the brick oven at Lawton, all served to combat the depression and mental effects of long confinement, a final deadly symptom of structural violence of the internment system, through action and engagement,” he wrote.

“Acts of resistance, effective or ineffective, were acts of survival.”

Archaeology students find likely evidence of a brief cavalry skirmish in southern Georgia during Sherman's March to the Sea

A Spencer repeating rifle casing and a toe tap with nails found during recent
excavation near Millen, Ga. (Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeological Project)

Archaeology students at a Georgia university have found artifacts that might derive from a skirmish between Union and Confederate cavalry during Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea.

Ryan McNutt, assistant professor of historical archaeology at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, said recent field work yielded fired casings from a Spencer repeating rifle and from a likely Allen & Wheelock .32 Rim fire side hammer revolver, a fired percussion cap, toe caps from footwear and a bridle rosette that matches types used by Union cavalry.

McNutt heads up the school’s Camp Lawton Archaeological Project, which for several years has been researching the remains of a Confederate prison camp that was in operation for several weeks in fall 1864.

In 2020, the university was awarded a $116,247 grant from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program to document and evaluate the archaeological integrity of two skirmish sites near the end of Sherman's campaign in Georgia: Buck Head Creek and Lawton (Lumpkin's) Station.

“Both of these conflicts occurred as the Confederacy attempted to tactically slow, or at least constrain, Sherman’s inexorable approach to southeast Georgia,” McNutt wrote in an email to the Picket.

Round believed to be from .32-caliber rimfire revolver (Camp Lawton Project)

The artifacts were found in the past month near the site of Lawton Station, a Dec. 4 clash that followed fighting at Buck Head Creek. Lawton Station had served the prison camp, which closed a few weeks before these skirmishes.

The Battle of Buck Head Creek on November 28, 1864, involved U.S. Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick’s and Confederate Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry forces. It took place across what are now Jenkins and Burke counties, a fighting Union withdrawal north from the area around the still-standing Buck Head Creek Church, through Reynold’s Plantation across the course of a day and over approximately three miles of period roads, McNutt said.

Kilpatrick was in the area to destroy railroad between August and Millen and burn a trestle. Another objective was to release the Camp Lawton prisoners, but Union forces discovered they had been moved to other sites. Federal forces were able to destroy a mile of track.

Gens. Judson Kilpatrick and Joseph Wheeler

On the 28^th, Wheeler “almost captured Kilpatrick, and pursued him and his men to Buck Head Creek. As Kilpatrick's main force crossed the creek, one regiment, supported by artillery, fought a rearguard action severely punishing Wheeler and then burned the bridge behind them,” says a National Park Service summary of the fighting. “Wheeler soon crossed and followed, but a Union brigade behind barricades at Reynolds's Plantation halted the Rebels' drive, eventually forcing them to retire.”

The main body of Sherman’s army, notably the 14^th and 20^th corps, approached Millen days later and engaged with Rebel cavalry.

According to McNutt, Capt. S.P. Dobbs and the 9^th Alabama Cavalry burned a bridge at Buck Head Creek Church and fell back to Lawton Station, “where they sheltered under fire for a period before withdrawing into Screven County toward Beaver Dam Creek.” (Lawton Station/Depot is where Federal prisoners were brought to the POW camp a couple months before.)

Front and back of bridle rosette (Camp Lawton Project)

The professor believes some of the Lawton Station fighting occurred with the boundaries of Magnolia Springs State Park, meaning it is protected. Much of the prison site, particularly the section where the guards lived, is inside the park. The Union prisoners lived in an area that is now federal property.

Georgia Southern students used Lidar, a remote sensing method, at the Lawton Station area and will do so again when they get to Buck Head Creek this summer. The aim of the project is to document any surviving above-ground indications of Lawton Station, field fortifications from Buck Head Creek, and historic roads, structures, houses, bridges that would have been used by both Confederate and Union forces throughout both battlefields.

McNutt believes the Lidar found what is believed to be the site of Lawton Station.

Students used metal detectors on an old road that went from the station, past Confederate barracks and the stockade to a larger road that goes north toward Augusta. This is where the artifacts were found.

“This would have been the retreat route of Captain Dobb's Confederate regiment, and the (pursuit) route of the Union cavalry,” McNutt wrote.

POW Robert Knox Sneden's map of prison (Library of Congress)

Beyond the artifacts mentioned above, the project found at Lawton Station “material culture remnants that are more ambiguous, but might be Union in origin.” That includes bits of saddlery and horse tack elements, “implying a greater presence of horse-mounted troops than were stationed at Lawton by the Confederates when it was operating as a prison camp,” McNutt said.

“These are all tantalizing bits of material culture that suggest we're looking at an edge of the skirmish, or at least an area where Union forces were firing at something or someone further along the road. As we progress through the spring field school, we'll fill this picture in more as we finish our search grid, and move up the road to investigate with another systematic metal detector survey the site of Lawton Station itself.”

McNutt concedes there is commingling of artifacts from the operation of the prison camp and the December skirmish. The survey has taken place on the edge of Rebel barracks and what may be an open parade ground.

“But the Spencer and .32-cal rimfire round are really only going to come from Union cavalry, given the Confederacy's inability to manufacture cased ammunition, especially with the copper shortage. I'm pretty confident in saying at a minimum, the Spencer and the .32 round are specific to some kind of engagement, and the bridle rosette is likely to come from that as well.”

“We have a few other ferrous items that I need to investigate in more detail, but a few are potential gun furniture, and there is a possible carbine sling bolt. So in short, there is some comingling, but these items range from being certainly not Confederate in origin, to being ambiguous, and possibly Confederate or Union.”

The professor said Kilpatrick sent troopers to Lawton in late November, but a major did not report any fighting. “I suspect given as deep as they were in Wheeler's turf, with extended (and uncertain) supply lines, conservation of ammunition would have been enforced, so they're unlikely to have just rode into the barracks area guns blazing.

“The more likely possibility is that these are items from that December cavalry skirmish -- but we need more information to be sure, and hopefully we'll know more as we finish up our search area.”

(At left is an adjustable buckle found by metal detector.)

In the meantime, the Camp Lawton Archaeological Project is contacting landowners in the area of Buck Head Creek to obtain permission to do field work there in the summer.

This field work will continue into 2022. McNutt says landowners, anyone interested in volunteering and those who might have collections of artifacts and would like him to take a look should contact him at rmcnutt@georgiasouthern.edu. 

More Camp Lawton prison site artifacts: Railroad spike, sash clasps, bricks, whiteware sherd and a copper rivet

Clasp for sash worn by a Confederate (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, GSU)

A spring-fed stream and a towering stockade wall separated Federal prisoners and the young men in gray who guarded them at Georgia’s Camp Lawton for a few short weeks in autumn 1864.

A lingering question for archaeologists who have been working on the site for nearly a decade is what else separated them -- especially when it came to food, supplies, shelter and general living conditions.

The 10,000 Union captives lived mostly on a hillside while their captors were scattered in different areas of the stockade exterior and artillery fortifications. The Federals built shebangs and other structures to provide shelter while the Confederates, mostly members of Georgia reserve regiments, apparently depended on tents and perhaps a barracks for officers.

Based on some archaeological finds in the past couple years, evidence suggests it “seems like the guards are a little better supplied than initially suggested,” said Dr. Ryan McNutt, director of the Camp Lawton Archaeology Project at Georgia Southern University in nearby Statesboro.

The Picket spoke recently with McNutt about artifacts that are linked to the Confederate troops who occupied camps in what is now Magnolia Springs State Park. The following items were found this year. You can read here about a stirrup found last week.


DIE-STAMPED SASH BUCKLES/CLASP

Clasp for sash worn by Confederate (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, GSU)

Sashes apparently were used as marks of rank for Confederate militia and quasi-military officials. Different colors may have been used by company officers or noncommissioned officers.

They were commonly found in Savannah, at jails and courthouses, said McNutt.

One of the buckles found at Camp Lawton (top image) has a crown motif; it may have come from Europe into Savannah via blockade runners, he said.

It’s known that elements of the 1^st through 5^th regiments of the Georgia Reserves were stationed at the site.

LINE OF BRICKS

Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University

McNutt is not yet sure how these were used. While it could be the remains of a chimney, they also could have been used as a foundation for a wall tent, with planks placed above. Bricks previously have been found in the prisoner area, the remains of ovens and tent foundations.

RAILROAD SPIKE

(Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University)

This likely came from the depot at Lawton, the terminus of a railroad line that carried Federal prisoners from the small town of Millen. It could find all kind of uses in a camp, including tents and other structures.

CERAMIC // WHITEWARE SHERD

Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University

From a Camp Lawton Facebook post in May: “Our whiteware sherd from yesterday has two possible sources. One is Clementson Bros, a North Staffordshire manufacture that produced a variety of plain and transfer print wares for the North American domestic market, and starts trading under the Clementson Bros name in 1867. However, the edge of the decoration appears to be a quasi royal arms, with a recumbent lion. You can just make out the paw. This doesn’t match any of their marks. It may be from Clementson & Young, which were imported into New Orleans for the southern market during the mid-19th century.”

COPPER ALLOY RIVET FROM A SOLDIER’S ACCOUTREMENTS

Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University

The Georgia Southern team the past couple years has concentrated on finding evidence of the Confederate camp and stockade features.

McNutt said they may return to the prisoner occupation area next, to look at how the camp was set up, what artifacts say about ethnic divisions among the POWs and to search for the sutler’s cabin.

'Out of the blue': A stirrup likely belonging to Confederate horse is a surprise find during excavations at Camp Lawton site in Georgia

The recovered stirrup (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University)

It’s been a fruitful summer field school for Georgia Southern University archaeology students conducting excavations on the site of Camp Lawton, a Civil War prisoner of war site that operated for a brief time in 1864.

They have found evidence of Confederate guard tent structures and other items that speak to the lives of those reservist soldiers, who had to make due with limited supplies and furnishings.

But it was an out-of-the-blue discovery Thursday that yielded perhaps the most compelling artifact of the season.

Project director Dr. Ryan McNutt was checking ground depressions – made more evident by recent heavy rains -- to verify areas that may have been marked by previous archaeological explorations.

“I was just basically pulling away pine needles, rotted vegetation and checking the area with a metal detector, looking for those spikes. When the metal detector hit (one) area, it overloaded the detector.” He thought he likely had come across a piece of garbage.

McNutt found, just under the topsoil, a stirrup that he believes was thrown into a trash pit during the operation of the prison. “I think it is pretty impressive. (Mine) was probably the first hand that has touched it since it was discarded there.”

He believes the stirrup and related horse tack found in the pit are almost certainly Confederate. “It is pretty much concrete evidence of Civil War activity,” McNutt said. “It matches those found at Confederate sites elsewhere.”

It’s quite possible the artifact was made before the war and belonged to an officer at the camp, perhaps a member of a Georgia reservist regiment or a Florida light artillery company.

McNutt said a pretty good chunk of metal remains in the rusted stirrup, which he estimates weighs about a half pound. He did not find any evidence of surviving leather and does not know why it may have been discarded.

The Georgia Southern team will check the maker’s mark and manufacturing style of the recovered artifact. They also will give it electrolysis treatment to protect the iron.

Views of summer work. (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University)

Lance Greene, McNutt’s predecessor as Lawton project manager, said material students have been finding support the interpretation that the stirrup belonged to a Rebel soldier.

“I think that Dr. McNutt is beginning to get a sense of the location of some of the areas used by Confederates, which is especially difficult because a lot of that area has been intensively used since just after the Civil War,” said Greene, an associate professor at Wright State University in Ohio.  

Greene said another stirrup was recovered at the park long ago. “As I recall, it was a surface find, or at least did not have a good provenience.”

Archaeologists are accustomed to finding items from multiple time periods when working a site, and that’s occurred at the Lawton site, which was located on what is now Magnolia Springs State Park and an adjoining federal fish hatchery. But McNutt told the Picket on Friday that most of the items found this year come from the mid-19^th century.

The Confederate camp broke into the news in 2010 when federal, state and campus officials announced that its location had been confirmed and the site already was yielding a trove of artifacts. Lawton was only open for about six weeks in autumn 1864. It held about 10,000 POWs moved from Andersonville and other sites as Union troops moved into central and south Georgia after taking Atlanta.

COMING SOON: Photos of more recent discoveries at Camp Lawton

Camp Lawton: Dig will continue efforts to learn more about stockade, Confederate captors

Possible Confederate shelter (Georgia Southern University photos)

3D scans of painted and unpainted bullets

Saturday’s (May 12) archaeological dig at the site of a Confederate prison near Millen, Ga., will be an opportunity for visitors to help excavate and screen soil at the southwest corner of the stockade.

The “public day” at Magnolia Springs State Park will include a 2 by 2 meter unit that has not been excavated, said Ryan McNutt, who oversees Georgia Southern University’s Camp Lawton project.

McNutt said he’d like to get a better sense of the construction method for anchoring corners of the wooden stockade.

“Is it similar to Andersonville? A different method?” he told the Picket. “Are they reinforced via joints and carpentry or were brackets and nails used?”

Cut nail and piece of horse tack (Courtesy of GSU)

Camp Lawton operated for about six weeks in autumn 1864 before the guards took Federal soldiers to other prisons as the Union army approached Savannah. Many of the POWs were transferred to the site from Camp Sumter, also known as Andersonville.

Saturday’s event, set for 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., will include artifacts previously excavated and 3D printed replicas.

“Since this is part of Georgia archaeology month, we're going to have a range of objects, both from Camp Lawton and from Georgia archaeology in general, ranging from zooarchaeological collections to 3D prints of artifacts including Union buttons, the modified tobacco pipe, as well as Minnie balls, nails, and projectile points from Georgia collections” McNutt said.

He said the project in 2017 located the potential remains of two Confederate structures. One may have been a builder’s trench with posts. ”The second, however, is a basin-shaped pit with two angled postholes on one side, which clearly looks like the remains of an ad hoc Confederate structure.”

3D scan of button

McNutt describes it as an “A” frame made of two angled posts, with potentially an eaves pole resting in the center, and a tarp, blanket or canvas thrown over it to make a lean-to.

The feature includes a subterranean pit dug not that different from a prisoner shebang (shelter) uncovered on the north side of the prison site.

Recovered artifacts include part of a frying pan, a cone cleaner for a percussion firearm, and various cut nails, brick fragments and some horse harness parts.

“These are all located in our search area close to the existing earthworks of Camp Lawton,” said McNutt.

More 3D replicas (GSU)

Previous excavations on the prisoner side of the relatively undisturbed site have yielded hundreds of Civil War artifacts that help illustrate daily life. Officials have a good idea of where the stockade walls were erected, having found some post remains. The project’s work in the past couple years has concentrated on improving knowledge of the Confederate side of the prison, which falls within the state park boundary.

The 10,000 Federal prisoners were to the west and across a creek, on a hillside that later became a federal fish hatchery. That side of Camp Lawton is on property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“I think with successive field seasons, especially the coming 2019 one, we'll find more and more evidence of the Confederate occupation, and be able to generate a dataset of artifacts and structural information that we can compare to the already rich record for the POW occupation,” McNutt said.

McNutt, like Lance Greene, his predecessor wants to know more about what life was like for both guards and prisoners “in that extremely turbulent year of 1864.”

The event is free, but entrance into Magnolia Springs State Park is $5, or free with a Park Pass.

Camp Lawton: Search for Confederate artifacts in Georgia turns up two recent items

Rifle percussion cap (top) and the artillery friction primer were manufactured after the Civil War.

(Updated) This past Saturday’s “public day” at the site of Camp Lawton in Georgia focused on archaeological evidence of the Confederate contingent that guarded about 10,000 Union prisoners.

As proof of you never know what you''ll find, two recovered items turned out to be from modern times.

Students thought they have recovered a brass friction primer from one of the artillery pieces inside the fort, said Lance Greene, an assistant professor. They also came across a brass percussion cap from a rifle, but quickly determined it wasn't 150 years old.

“We did notice on the top of the percussion cap a maker's mark, 'CCI', which is a modern ammunition company," said Greene. "Turns out, the percussion cap must have been dropped recently by re-enactors -- one of the problems we face when working on military sites, especially dating to the Civil War.”

After a photo of the two items went up on the project's Facebook page, two commenters pointed out that the friction primer, too, was modern. "We'll definitely have to be careful about identification of these kinds of artifacts inside the park," the GSU page responded.

Dig at the fort area (Photos courtesy of Georgia Southern U.)

A couple times a year, the public is invited to watch Georgia Southern University archaeology students do work at the site, much of it in Magnolia Springs State Park, just north of Millen. About 40 people watched students excavate a 2 meter by 1 meter space inside the fort and sift through soil.

GSU students over the past few years have looked for evidence of Confederate quarters and buildings in the fort. They’ve also recovered numerous legitimate artifacts from inside the stockade, where Federal soldiers were crowded on a hillside for six weeks in late 1864 until they were sent to other Southern prisons as Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s troops marched on Savannah.

Greene said students this spring will continue work on master’s candidate William Brant’s research on the Confederate occupation.

During the summer field school, they will look for evidence of barracks and other buildings.

“We will also finish excavating the remains of the brick oven within the prisoner area,” said Greene. “We removed all the brick rubble last summer, but there are still ash deposits that contain a lot of animal bone, and we are excited about the prospect of being able to talk in detail about prisoner diet.” 

Camp Lawton website will feature 'artifact of the week' during 150th anniversary

3D of Union brass button

Georgia Southern University in Statesboro is updating a website that documents students’ archaeological work at the site of a Confederate military prison that was open for six weeks in autumn 1864.

The new features and Facebook posts with quotes from Union prisoners are timed to the 150^th anniversary of Camp Lawton, which began operations about Oct. 10, 1864.

The website, which has a brief history of the camp and the Civil War prison experience, now has an “artifact of the week.” The first item, posted Monday, is a 3D Union brass coat button. "Several of these buttons have been recovered from the prisoners' encampment at Camp Lawton, and probably represent a trade item or form of currency in the camp," the page says.

(Courtesy GSU)

A descendant’s page includes information on individuals related to a Confederate guard and two Union soldiers. Nina Raeth, whose great-grandfather, an German immigrant, was held captive at Lawton, and Doug Carter, whose Georgia ancestor guarded the prisoners, have become fast friends in recent years.

GSU is seeking other descendants who might share their stories.

Lance Greene, assistant professor of anthropology, said the related Facebook posts about camp life will last through November 22, the last day of the prison’s existence. Greene said future website upgrades will feature more information on archaeology and artifact conservation, including a lab at GSU that includes water and alcohol baths, electrolysis and air abrasion.

Museum opens at site of prison; visitors assume identity of real POW, learn fate

Exhibit hall at Magnolia Springs History Center (Ga. DNR)

Debbie Wallsmith’s favorite time period is South Africa during the Middle Ages, with a special interest in Stone Age technology in several African countries.

 

The past 15 years, however, have seen the trained archaeologist help protect and display cultural resources for Georgia’s state parks, with a special focus of late on Union prisoners held at a Confederate prison just north of Millen.

“I never expected that this would become my obsession,” Wallsmith says of her ongoing effort to develop a database of those prisoners – including their birthdate, hometown, military unit, where they were captured and their fate during and after captivity.

That searchable database of nearly 3,000 names is among the highlights at the new Magnolia Springs History Center, which formally opens at 2 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 7) with a ceremony at Magnolia Springs State Park. The program includes speeches, a ribbon-cutting, refreshments and costumed rangers demonstrating Civil War medicine and camp life.

Guests will assume the identity of a Union prisoner

The museum, in a renovated building near the springs, will tell the story of Camp Lawton, a Confederate military prison built to handle the overflow at Andersonville prison in central Georgia. It held more than 10,000 Union soldiers for six weeks in the late autumn of 1864. 

Visitors will “check in” to assume the identity of an individual POW, learn more about the experience of being at Lawton and then find out that prisoner’s fate.

The venue also will explain the springs’ importance and the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal program that put millions of young men to work. They built park facilities around the country, including at Magnolia Springs.

Officials are excited about the museum’s potential to increase tourism in Jenkins County and teach visitors about the camp’s history and ongoing archaeology on the grounds of the state park and an adjoining federal hatchery.

“A lot of people from the region are really interested in learning more about the site, and a museum on site is a great way to fulfill that need,” said Lance Greene, an assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia Southern University. “I'm glad that it will be open before the 150th anniversary of the occupation of the camp. I think it will generate a lot of interest.”

Greene and his students have conducted extensive archaeological digs of the site, a virtual time capsule because it was relatively undisturbed after the Civil War. Prisoners were quickly evacuated in mid- to late November 1864, leaving a trove of personal artifacts.

Greene is grateful to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources for providing space for the students to process the objects.

Visitors to the museum will be able to watch students when they are at work in an old kitchen that has been converted into the small lab. The items are then taken to the campus in Statesboro.

“There is a perception that, when an artifact comes out of the ground, not much else is done with it. The reality is that excavation is just the beginning. We have to wash and process the artifacts, catalog them and enter them into a database,” Greene tells the Picket. “We also spend a lot of time conserving artifacts; a lot of the material we recover from Camp Lawton is corroded metal. If these artifacts aren't treated quickly and in a professional manner, they can literally fall apart. Our new lab space at the park allows us to teach the public about all those things we do after excavations, in the lab, that are just as important as digging.”

Visitors on the self-guided tour also will see reproduction uniforms and a surgeon’s kit, a movie, a replica of a prisoner shelter, panels about the camp and a display of some of the recovered artifacts. They can vote, as the prisoners did, in the 1864 presidential election, choosing between President Abraham Lincoln and challenger George B. McClellan, a former general.

Debbie Wallsmith

The museum, which officials say has state-of-the-art security, also has a place for them to download a QR (quick response) code scanner. Visitors can then use smartphones to scan codes on various displays to learn more about a subject.

Dustin Fuller, site manager at the park, said there will be between 15 and 20 QR stations, with information on such topics as Sherman’s March and a Robert Knox Sneden, a Union soldier who produced important sketches and watercolors of Camp Lawton during his captivity.

Fuller is excited that the park can show visitors something more than a few remaining earthworks.

“For the longest time, Camp Lawton has literally and metaphorically been underground,” he says. “We have a pretty big story to tell. We will learn more.”

Museum visitors will get one of about 125 prisoner cards at a check-in station that features a desk and mannequin. They will be of Illinois soldiers because of the richness of detail and biographical information.

Wallsmith, an interpretive specialist with the DNR’s Historic Preservation Division, has used a variety of databases and resources to build out the Camp Lawton prisoner database.

Many of the men ended up back at Andersonville shortly after Lawton closed; others went to camps in Blackshear and Thomasville in south Georgia. Some died at Andersonville, others were exchanged at Vicksburg and a few ended up on the Sultana, which caught fire and sank in the Mississippi River shortly after the war ended, leaving hundreds of released prisoners held across the South dead.

Wallsmith began her research with a death register published as the Roll of Honor by the U.S. Army. It lists 748 POW deaths, with 415 names. Information was verified through state muster rolls, where available.

To find out the identities on information and survivors, Wallsmith used the National Park Service’s “Soldiers and Sailors Database.” But it has limited information on men who were transferred from Andersonville to Millen.

Exterior of the new history center (DNR)

She ran into discrepancies with different spellings of surnames and some handwriting was difficult to read.

Wallsmith also turned to Andersonville prisoner records and civilwarprisons.com.

The Andersonville records include “Departures” volumes with the headings of “Died, Escaped, Paroled, Exchanged, or Released,” as well as the date.

“Millen” is found written in the logs, and while not searchable, the records and the names can be checked on the civilwarprisons.com database, which has an entire section for Andersonville, says Wallsmith.

Still, that leaves about 7,000 names of prisoners held at Lawton in which the database currently has no disposition. But Wallsmith cautions she has only gotten through the M’s in the Andersonville departure list.

Wallsmith has reviewed obituaries and read findagrave.com entries to learn about those who survived the war. “Interestingly, a lot of them went west, as far as Seattle, Washington.”

Boston Corbett, who killed Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, spent a few days at Camp Lawton after he was transferred by train from Andersonville.

Charles Plumleigh of the 15^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry wrote about his capture at Kennesaw Mountain, Ga., and Charles Edward Bartholomew, 1^st Connecticut Cavalry died, in Spokane, Wash., in 1936.

“I have been fascinated by how many survived and how many went on to be successful people,” Wallsmith says.

The Magnolia Springs History is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. The cost is $2 per person. Check in first at the park office. Parking at Magnolia Springs State Park is $5 per vehicle. The DNR is continuing to update the Camp Lawton database and is seeking the public’s help in gathering information on prisoners and guards. Please write to camplawtonpows@gadnr.org with information or questions.