ACADIAN-CAJUN-L Archives

From: "Heidi D. Streetman" <>
Subject: Text Article:WHERE REBELS FROZE
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2002 10:55:06 -0800

Hey Y'all,
Here is a reprint of the article about the OhioCivil War Prison
Camp for Confederate P.O.W.'s . I am not a Civil War buff, but found
this intriguing. Hope it is of interest to you all. As I said,
before, the fellow there, will do look ups for specific names, if you
think you had ancestors there. Go to the website for the camp:
www.johnsonsisland.com to find him.
Heidi
in Atlanta

AJC Home Edition
© The Atlanta Journal - Constitution
Sunday, 12/30/2001
Section: Features Letter: M Page: 1

WHERE REBELS FROZE
Ohio looks southward to save a Civil War prison site

By JIM AUCHMUTEY/Staff


Johnson's Island, Ohio

David Bush loves latrines.

"These things are time capsules," he says, poking a boot at the
mossy
stones that mark one of the pits
where thousands of Confederate officers followed nature's orders.

For the past decade, Bush has been excavating the site of a Union
prison camp on Johnson's Island, a
Civil War Alcatraz in the cold, steely waters of Sandusky Bay. Prisoners

were always losing or hiding
things in latrines, so the dark night soil where the outhouses stood has

proved a fertile vein of artifacts ---
everything from combs and jewelry to bones and pottery. Bush once found
several curls of something
white and fragile that he thought might be a bird skull. Then he noticed

some print; they were scraps of
newspaper, preserved by lime.

"I thought that was remarkable," he says, "once I got over the fact
of
what the men used the paper for."

Like those prisoners marooned in Lake Erie, Bush finds himself in
an
odd place these days. The
developer who owns the prison site has run into financial difficulties
and
needs to sell the land. He's given
Bush until the end of January to raise money to purchase the property
and
save it from being bulldozed for
vacation homes. Now this Maine native, this longtime Ohioan --- this
Yankee
--- is appealing to
descendants of the Confederate prisoners to help buy and preserve the
place
where their ancestors
languished.

Bush has organized a nonprofit group called Friends and
Descendants
of Johnson's Island and is
mailing a fund-raising pamphlet to hundreds of interested parties south
of
the Ohio River. If the site is to be
saved, he figures Southerners will have to do it. He only hopes they'll
feel more kindly toward the island
than their great-grandpappies did when the Union commissary tried to
sell
them souvenir pictures of the
camp for $3.

There weren't many takers. As one of the prisoners, Capt. W.A. Wash
of
Kentucky, wrote, "Few of
them wanted to see the place longer than was absolutely necessary."

Driving along the western shore of Sandusky Bay, it's easy to miss
the
turnoff to Johnson's Island. An
inconspicuous historical sign marks the causeway. Bearing left on
Confederate Drive, you pass some of the
homes that hug the beaches of the 300-acre island. Soon you come upon a
rectangular cemetery where
270 Confederates rest under ranks of Georgia marble. At water's edge, a
bronze infantryman faces
eastward across the bay toward Cedar Point, an amusement park famed for
its
roller coasters. Sometimes
the distant screams sound strangely like Rebel yells.

Without a guide, you'd never notice the place where those sleeping

Confederates spent their final days.
The heart of the prison yard is hidden in the wooded interior of the
island. The frame buildings are long
gone. Only the eroded ramparts of a star-shaped fort are obvious in the
underbrush.

It doesn't look like much, but this patch of scrub has yielded one
of
the richest troves of Civil War
artifacts anywhere.

"Johnson's Island is a very important archaeological site," says
Edwin
C. Bearrs, chief historian emeritus
of the National Park Service and an authority on Civil War sites.

Bush, an anthropologist at nearby Heidelberg College, has brought
the
prison back to life one trowel at
a time. Since he and his students began digging in 1989, they've
uncovered
thousands of objects from the
soil of a place where as many as 3,000 Confederates at a time were held.

Working from Union records,
the archaeologists have located many of the 13 barracks and 60 privies
and
have painstakingly unearthed
them to a depth of 5 feet.

"You can tell a lot about how they lived," says the 50-year-old
professor, bespectacled and
gray-bearded, whose good-humored enthusiasm for his work is evident in
the
vanity plate on his Nissan
Pathfinder: DIG JI.

Take Block 1, where prisoners who renounced the Confederacy and
took
an oath of allegiance to the
United States were transferred. They apparently received better
treatment,
Bush says. "We've found wine
and liquor bottles in the latrine there. Alcohol was considered
contraband
in the rest of the prison."

Johnson's Island was not a horrible place as Civil War prisons go.
Of
the 60,000 POWs who died
during the war, only 300 to 400 perished on the island --- many fewer
than
at more notorious camps such
as Georgia's Andersonville or New York's Elmira.

Still, the men suffered. Their drafty barracks were so cold during
the
winter that water jugs froze solid.
In the later stages of the war, when prisoner exchanges stopped and
rations
were cut, the captives got so
desperate that they'd eat anything. Some latrines have surrendered dog
and
rat skeletons.

Despite privations, the men managed to bring some beauty into their

lives. One of the most common
objects the archaeologists have found are pieces of jewelry carved by
prisoners from hard rubber, some of
them with initials and exquisite shell inlays. The Confederates sent
them
to loved ones back home or
arranged to sell them in Sandusky for spending money.

Handling their personal effects has driven Bush to learn more about

the prisoners. Almost all were
officers, well-educated and literate. Bush often hears from descendants
who
have photographs or
unpublished diaries. He likes to read from them when he goes to area
schools to talk about the prison ---
sometimes wearing a scratchy wool Confederate uniform he had made for
such
occasions.

Bush tells students about the prisoner who gave birth and was
paroled
when it was revealed that she
had been passing as a man. Or about the ingenious inmate who fashioned a

working camera from spy
glasses and oyster cans. Or about prison snowball fights and baseball
games
and minstrel shows staged by
a troupe of jailbirds who called themselves the Rebellonians. Or about
the
numerous escape attempts,
some successful, most not. One prisoner, Lt. Charles Pierce of
Louisiana,
tried to break out seven times
only to die of yellow fever in New Orleans two years after the war
ended.

Bush learns new things about Johnson's Island all the time. Last
month, a local man called to say that he
thinks there's a prisoner buried on his property. Bush speculates that
it
could be an escapee who froze to
death and was buried during the spring thaw by a farmer who didn't want
authorities asking what a Rebel
had been doing in his corn crib. The caller said his family had used the

Confederate's uniform to cover a
chair --- a chair they still have.

"I've got to get over there," Bush says.

After the last prisoners were released in 1865, Leonard Johnson, the

owner of the island, offered to sell
the cemetery to the federal government for $300. Washington wasn't
interested. The only prison camp the
victors cared to memorialize was Andersonville.

By the late 1880s, when a delegation from Georgia toured the
island,
all the structures were gone and
the wooden grave markers were rotting away. The Georgians raised money
for
marble headstones. A
United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter in Cincinnati later
purchased
the cemetery and donated it to
the federal government, which maintains the property.

Little else changed on the island until the 1950s, when a real
estate
partnership bought much of the
acreage and started building beach houses. Residents occasionally dug up

relics or swapped ghost stories
about uniformed figures seen late at night near the graveyard, but no
one
paid serious attention to the
history beneath their feet.

That changed in the mid-1980s, when Cleveland management consultant

Carl Zipfel, a nephew of one
of the developers, bought almost half the island with a plan to build an

upscale boating community called
Baycliffs. New preservation laws required an archaeological survey
before
he could start. The state
referred him to Bush.

For the next decade, Zipfel allowed Bush and his students to
excavate
the core of the prison yard as he
sold lots and developed luxury homes on the periphery. Many islanders
opposed any new construction and
fought the new subdivision in court. Some of them even opposed Bush's
project, saying that he wanted to
bring in tourists and Civil War re-enactors.

Zipfel spent so much on legal fees that when the economy curdled
last
year, he found himself strapped
for cash.

"My lender is squeezing me," he says. "If I have to sell the
property
to another developer, I imagine he's
going to want to build on it."

Before it comes to that, Zipfel offered to sell the bulk of the
prison
site --- 16 1/2 acres --- to Bush and
his group for $350,000. Considering that off-water lots go for as much
as
$40,000 per quarter-acre, Bush
regards it as a discount price. He needs $50,000 to finance the
purchase.

Johnson's Island is listed as a National Historic Landmark, but the

designation does nothing to stop
private landowners from doing as they see fit. The Ohio Historical
Society
repeatedly lobbied the state
Legislature to buy the site but never succeeded. Preservation groups
such
as the Civil War Trust focus their
efforts on saving battlefields.

With no government funds forthcoming, Bush is counting on
donations
from history buffs, Confederate
heritage organizations and the hundreds of POW descendants who have
contacted him over the years.

He's counting on people like Robert Moon of Atlanta, a 60-year-old

state employee whose
great-great-grandfather was captured at the Battle of Resaca and taken
to
Johnson's Island. Moon is so
fascinated with his ancestor that he had a replica of his uniform made
and
wears it to Sons of Confederate
Veterans functions. He read about Bush's work on the Internet and
contacted
him for information.

Or there's 54-year-old Pat Cates of Woodstock, who learned about
Johnson's Island after he retired
as an elementary school principal and started researching a book on the
1st
Confederate Regiment,
Georgia Infantry. He and his wife, Carol, have spent part of the past
two
summers in Ohio helping out with
the digs. Now they're helping with a substantial contribution.

"Look at all the Civil War sites we've bulldozed in metro Atlanta,"

Cates says. "We ought to preserve
some of our history."

Every week brings new checks and pledges, but Bush badly needs
reinforcements. By Christmas, he
had raised less than half the down payment. Reluctantly, he has begun to

prepare himself for the possibility
that the island's days as a living dig soon may be history.

"I'd hate to leave it," Bush says. "This is slow work. I'd say 95
percent of the site remains to be
excavated. We have a lot of latrines left."

> For more information: Friends and Descendants of Johnson's Island,
3272
County Road 175, Clyde,
Ohio 43410. 419-448-2327, www.johnsonsisland.com.



Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Photo
Caption: A bronze Confederate surveys the camp cemetery. Between 300 and

400 prisoners died; most were
buried there, though some bodies were sent home. / RON SCHWANE / Special

Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Graphic
Caption: PRISONERS WROTE OF EXPERIENCES
More than 10,000 Confederates did time on Johnson's Island between
April
1862
and September 1865. Many of them kept diaries or wrote memoirs. Some
excerpts:

Capt. Robert Bingham, North Carolina
Sunday, Sept. 27, 1863
Yankee girls and women most certainly like to look at naked
Rebels. .
. .
Today some saw a man washing and passed by and one little one, about 15,

was so
anxious that she looked back over her shoulder till she fell into the
ditch
leading "from] the pump.

Maj. Henry Kyd Douglas, Virginia
Christmas 1863
On receiving a package containing mince pie, fruitcake and a
bottle
of
brandy: On Christmas morning I quietly called several comrades to my
bunk
to
taste the precious fluid --- of disappointment. The bottle had been
opened
outside, the brandy taken and replaced with water, adroitly recorked,
and
sent
in. I hope the Yankee who played that practical joke lived to repent it
and
was
shot before the war ended.

Capt. Littleburg W. Allen, Virginia
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 1864
This afternoon we had an exciting scene among the prisoners. Some
of
the
men under Col. Maxwell challenged the Upper Block to a snow balling
battle
and
they formed a line of battle, with their flags. . . . A terrible battle
of
snowballs ensued and the most tremendous yelling. . . . A large number
of
Yankee
officers gathered on the walls and were highly amused. . . . It is
rather
expensive fun and no doubt many will be sick from it. I learn that our
party
represent the "Rebels" "and] the others the Yankees and the Yankees of
course
get terribly whipped in the long run.

DIARY EXCERPTS
Capt. W.A. Wash, Kentucky
Tuesday, Feb. 23, 1864
Capt. Thomas Burgess Brantly catches, kills, skins, fries and eats
a
rat,
and I get a hind leg to pick --- excellent, tastes like a squirrel. No
less
than
twelve men breakfast on a rat, not from necessity, but curiosity.

Lt. William Peel, Mississippi
Monday, May 2, 1864
I never saw it snow in May before.

Lt. Edmund D. Patterson, Alabama
Tuesday, Aug. 16, 1864
Patterson grew up near Sandusky, Ohio, and enlisted in the
Confederate
army
after he went south to teach school. His father visited him in prison:
Pa
has
been here all day. I went outside and remained with him during his stay.
.
. .
Pa still thinks me wrong, and gives me advice which I cannot accept. He
urges me
to give up the cause of the South which he pronounces a doomed one and
one
which
he is willing and anxious to see put down even though it will take years
to
accomplish and all the treasure and blood both North and South have. I
can
scarcely consider myself a member of the family --- we have nothing in
common.

Lt. Col. Joe Barbiere, Tennessee
Undated
After a guard shot a prisoner who was returning from the latrine
after
"lights out": Thirty feet from the wall around the entire prison, is an
imaginary line, called the dead-line, yet on one side the sinks are not
ten
feet
from the wall, and it was while going to his quarters from one of them,
that
Captain Meadows was shot down. . . . To step across this line is death,
a
heavy
penalty for a slight offence.

Capt. John H. Reece, Georgia
Thursday, Feb. 23, 1865
Today the sutler is selling vegetables in small quantities, such as
Irish
potatoes, cabbage, white beans, onions and tomatoes. This is the first
thing in
the way of vegetables sold in this prison since last July. The prisoners

are
famishing gradually. . . . A good "many] have the scurvy, and some are
very
bad
off --- teeth all becoming loose and sores breaking out on the legs ---
one
pretty bad case in my room.

Maj. George McKnight, Louisiana (who sent poems to newspapers under the
pen
name
Asa Hartz):
How many moons will rise and wane.
How many days will languish.
Ere peace, the white-winged angel comes,
To soothe a people's anguish?
God speed the longed-for, prayed-for day,
When loved ones bright and cheery,
Will welcome us around the hearths
From prison on Lake Erie.

©2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reprint with permission from
The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or
distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The

Atlanta Journal-Constitution and any copyright holder identified in the
material's copyright notice is prohibited.

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• Text Article:WHERE REBELS FROZE by "Heidi D. Streetman" <>