| Elmira Prison Camp was in Elmira, New York. It was eight acres of land by the Chemung River. It was on ground that was level and lower then all of the land around it, so it didn't drain very well. In the rainy season it became very muddy and squishy. It was made up of post barracks built to accommodate up to four thousand people. The barracks were a single story wooden building with two rows of crudely built double bunks. Each barrack could hold forty-five to fifty bunks. Around the perimeter of the prison camp was a twelve ft. wooden board fence with sentry boxes and elevated platforms to position guards in. |
| On July 6, 1864 the first POWs arrived at Elmira. They were 400 men from Point Lookout brought to Elmira to relieve overcrowding there. On July 12, 502 more men were brought in. On July 15 a fourth trainload of prisoners on route to Elmira collided with an eastbound coal train. Forty-eight POWs and seventeen guards were killed. Ninety-three POWs and sixteen guards were injured. And then in all of the confusion five POWs escaped. By the end of the month of July there were over 4,424 men confined there. There had been two escapes and eleven deaths. The government allowed the prison to use half an acre of land as a cemetery. They named it Woodlawn Cemetery. |
| Laborers who helped take care of the cemetery and bury the dead got forty dollars a month. John W. Jones a former slave from Leesburg, Virginia lived near the prison. He took charge of the Confederate burials and went on to keep accurate death records of deaths in Elmira prison throughout the history of it. |
| By the end of August 9,600 POWs were being held there. Less then ten percent had blankets and most didn't even have a handful of straw to keep warm with. On August 7 there were no more tents. The ones they got shipped in were ragged and shredded. By the end of August there were 115 deaths. By the end of September there were 385 deaths. A majority of the deaths were from diarrhea and dysentery. Scurvy broke out among the prison also. On September 11 there were over 1,870 cases of scurvy around the camp. Elmira led all the northern prisons in the death rate, which was an average of about ten deaths a day. |
| Elmira was unlike any other prisons because instead of starting out as a fairly acceptable place it was always a concentration camp. It was known as the worst prison in the north. From the start to the finish 2,933 people died and only 17 escaped. The most people held there was 9,441 men. |
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Speer, Lonnie R. "Portals to Hell" Stackpole Books, 1997 Encyclopedia Britanica,
Civil
War Prisons. 1959 ed.
Brad Badura
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