Brainstorming: Alton Military Prison for Confederate POWs.
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| The red box is around John Storment's name. |
My 4th Great Grandfather was imprisoned at Alton, Il where he caught Smallpox and died, his name is listed on a memorial today as Private Jno S. Storment.
In reality his name is John S. Storment.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9987750
LAST SURVIVOR OF PRISONERS IN
ALTON CONFEDERATE PRISON DIES
Source: Alton Telegraph, August
31, 1940
Samuel A. Harrison, last know
survivor of the Confederate prisoners in the old
penitentiary at Alton, died Friday night at his home near
Rolla, Mo. The Telegraph was informed of the death of the 98
year old war veteran in a
telegram from his grandson, S. Claude Null. Funeral
services for Mr. Harrison will be at Anutt, Mo. Samuel
Harrison was in Alton on June 7, 1938, and visited the site
of the old penitentiary where he had been a prisoner of war
73 years before. At that time, though in his ninety-sixth
year, the little old man who once scoured Missouri plains
with the daring Confederate raider, General Price, appeared
in excellent health and talked with vivid memory of the dark
days
which he spent in a military prison while the tragic
fratricidal conflict between the North and the South was
coming to an end. Harrison, who enlisted in the Confederate
army at the age of 20 in 1862, was captured in the closing
months of the war while trying to return to his Rolla, Mo.,
home after his detachment, one of two commanded by Price,
was split into scattered groups and faced surrender or
death. He was kept prisoner at Rolla for four or five
weeks, then was taken to St. Louis where he remained a month
while exchanges were being carried on by the North and South
of Confederate prisoners at St. Louis and Union prisoners at
Richmond, Va. Harrison was among those kept in a confinement
because of the lack of a sufficient number of Union
prisoners in the exchange and was taken to the Alton
penitentiary. That was in December 1864. He was not released
until June 3, 1865, more than a month after the
Confederacy's last shred of resistance was broken at
Appomattox and General Robert E. Lee surrendered in an
honorable peace to General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of
the Union armies. During his stay in Alton's now
non-existent prison, Harrison survived a fearful smallpox
epidemic that killed off his comrades in confinement as fast
as they could be buried. He told how an old man came each
day and night with a horse and hack to transport coffins
bearing the bodies of the dead to a cemetery and how a
number of his fellow prisoners executed a daring escape once
by substituting themselves in the coffin for the dead men
and then making their get away en route to the burial
ground. He told also of other breaks and attempted breaks -
how one of the most carefully planned was frustrated just
inches short of success when a prison guard, walking over
the soft ground outside the penitentiary after a heavy rain,
fell through into a tunnel which the prisoners had been
digging for weeks. While here in 1938, Harrison visited the
Confederate cemetery in North Alton, where many of his
comrades lie buried and also view the crumbled walls of the
penitentiary in which he lived through some of the most
poignant moments of his life. A week-choked patch of ground
marked the spot where his cell had once been.
which he spent in a military prison while the tragic
fratricidal conflict between the North and the South was
coming to an end. Harrison, who enlisted in the Confederate
army at the age of 20 in 1862, was captured in the closing
months of the war while trying to return to his Rolla, Mo.,
home after his detachment, one of two commanded by Price,
was split into scattered groups and faced surrender or
death. He was kept prisoner at Rolla for four or five
weeks, then was taken to St. Louis where he remained a month
while exchanges were being carried on by the North and South
of Confederate prisoners at St. Louis and Union prisoners at
Richmond, Va. Harrison was among those kept in a confinement
because of the lack of a sufficient number of Union
prisoners in the exchange and was taken to the Alton
penitentiary. That was in December 1864. He was not released
until June 3, 1865, more than a month after the
Confederacy's last shred of resistance was broken at
Appomattox and General Robert E. Lee surrendered in an
honorable peace to General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of
the Union armies. During his stay in Alton's now
non-existent prison, Harrison survived a fearful smallpox
epidemic that killed off his comrades in confinement as fast
as they could be buried. He told how an old man came each
day and night with a horse and hack to transport coffins
bearing the bodies of the dead to a cemetery and how a
number of his fellow prisoners executed a daring escape once
by substituting themselves in the coffin for the dead men
and then making their get away en route to the burial
ground. He told also of other breaks and attempted breaks -
how one of the most carefully planned was frustrated just
inches short of success when a prison guard, walking over
the soft ground outside the penitentiary after a heavy rain,
fell through into a tunnel which the prisoners had been
digging for weeks. While here in 1938, Harrison visited the
Confederate cemetery in North Alton, where many of his
comrades lie buried and also view the crumbled walls of the
penitentiary in which he lived through some of the most
poignant moments of his life. A week-choked patch of ground
marked the spot where his cell had once been.
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