Andersonville Prison

When Kellogg arrived,

Eleven of us combined to form a “family.” For the small sum of two dollars in [Federal] greenbacks we purchased eight small saplings…These we bent and made fast in the ground and covering them with our blankets, made a tent with an oval roof, about 13 feet long.

With no blankets to wrap around themselves, Kellogg and his companions found the ground cold to sleep on, but protection from rain and sun seemed more urgent.

I suspect that Davies, too, had a kind of “family.” In spring of 1863, his diary mentioned “the Welsh Squad,” consisting of “T. Humphrey, myself, John Jones, S. Gales and Evan Evans.” Jones died of pneumonia that fall. Davies, Gales, and Evans, along with Ohio native Wakeman Bell, shared a tent at a camp outside of Memphis in the spring of 1864. All four of the tent’s occupants are listed in the database of Andersonville prisoners at the POW museum. Perhaps they remained a group at the prison.

By the time Davies got there, the camp was considerably more crowded than when Kellogg arrived. Leonard tells me that sometimes men would reach the prison at night. “They would try to find a place to lie down and sleep. Over and over, someone would say, ‘No, that’s my spot.’ Finally, they’d just collapse on the ground. They’d wake up and find themselves surrounded by four or five corpses.”

I sit near the top of the hill, then down at the edge of the flatter area that was once swamp, then on the far side of the stream, trying to connect to Davies, asking him at each spot, “Is there where you camped?” But I don’t get an answer.

Kellogg described the camp routine, beginning with a 9 a.m. roll call, which did not involve names, only the count of prisoners in each mess of 90. If anyone was missing, bloodhounds were sent out to find the absent man. Bred for generations to track escaped slaves, the bloodhounds were almost always successful. If, on the other hand, anyone had died in the night, the rations for that group were reduced accordingly, and the body was loaded on a wagon for transport to the cemetery.

The same wagon, unwashed, was used in the afternoon to bring in the food. Kellogg lists the daily ration, which varied over time. When he was first imprisoned, he received “a pint and a half of coarse corn meal, about two ounces of bacon, a little salt, and also a little soap.” Often the prisoners had to cook their own corn bread — if they could get wood.

Over the 14 months that Andersonville was in operation, only about 300 prisoners managed to escape, most of them while on work details outside the stockade, such as wood-gathering expeditions. To discourage the prisoners from trying to escape, the guards often told them that prisoner exchanges were being planned. For months, these rumors proved to be untrue. Some of the prisoners stopped believing the tales.

Kellogg wrote extensively about the “Raiders,” a gang of Irish toughs who terrorized the other prisoners until a group went to the camp administrator and asked for help. The six ringleaders were tried by a jury of recent arrivals, to ensure impartiality, and the leaders were condemned to die. Davies seems to have gotten the number wrong when he wrote:

Monday July 11, 1864 11 of our men was Hung on the same scaffold & at the same time for robbing & murdering their fellow Prisoners

That one entry is all he had to stay about life at Andersonville. Maybe he didn’t want to set down the excruciating details in a book he would eventually send to his wife. It’s also possible he sent the diary home soon after his capture — Dennison mentions several times that he wrote and received letters while in prison. Davies may have made the last few pages of entries after his discharge.

On the computer in the corner of the museum lobby, I find that the 19 captured members of Company A all survived their imprisonment. Of the 137 captured members of the 95th Ohio, seven died at Andersonville. The only name I recognize from the diary is that of Barton Durant who was captured at Colliersville, Tennessee, on December 28, 1863. He had been in prison for almost eight months when he died on August 20.

Thanks to a prisoner who kept records of deaths, plus the post-war assistance of the famed nurse Clara Barton, we know exactly where each prisoner was buried. I write down the number on Durant’s record — 6223 — and walk to the cemetery.

The number 13,000 suddenly takes on a visual meaning when I see the rows upon rows of neat little white headstones stretching across acres of land. The bodies were buried shoulder to shoulder, so the gravestones are inches apart, numbered in sequence of death and etched with the names of the dead. In Section E, I kneel at the grave of Barton Durant.

Suddenly I feel Davies’ presence. I sense that Durant’s friendship helped him survive in the prison. Davies is grateful that I am paying my respects to his comrade. I haven’t been able to cry in the mournful field of brown grass, but now tears well from my eyes.

As I did at my great-great-great-grandparents’ graves in a Maryland cemetery, I find a 2012 penny in my pocket and press it into the earth next to Durant’s gravestone.

Davies wrote:

September 19 Got out of Prison with men to be exchanged between Sherman & Hosa

Wednesday 21 When within 15 miles of our lines near Atlanta myself & Wakeman Bell made our escape into the woods…

Thursday September 22 Got safe to Sherman’s Army

According to the database, all the other members of Company A were transferred to other prisons, suggesting that they had once again been lied to about plans for their exchange.

Sitting in the cemetery, it occurs to me that I had a close shave. If Davies had died in prison, I would never have been born. He’d had malaria when he arrived — if he had spent the rest of the war in another prison, he might not have survived. It must have taken spirit and determination to escape.

In that moment, I feel close to my great-great-grandfather.

This is our fifth excerpt of Violet Snow’s in progress book, “News of My Ancestors,” about her search for her relatives’ stories. Visit her blog at https://newsofmyancestors.wordpress.com/.