maj. gen. joseph wheeler camp #863, conyers, ga. gen. joe ... · federate soldiers were snatched...
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Camp Officers:
Camp Cmdr: John Mark Camp
1st Lt. Cmdr: James C. Chappell
2nd. Lt. Cmdr: Roy Thomas Cook
2nd_Lt. [email protected]
Camp Adjutant: Steve Camp
Editor: J. H. Underwood
Volume 14, Issue 6
Gen. Joe’s Dispatch Maj . Gen . Joseph Wheeler Camp #863, Conyers , Ga.
“Our Commanders Com-ments” By: Commander Mark Camp
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“43rd Annual Henry Wirz Memorial Service “ Add from the Georgia Confederate
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“Grave Misconduct” By: Barbara Rivera Homes (Continued from Page 1.)
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“Grave Misconduct” By: Barbara Rivera Homes (Continued from Page 3.)
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Inside this issue:
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1864, the bodies of seven Con-federate soldiers were snatched from their fresh graves. Now some Civil War historians sus-pect five of the cadavers were sold for medical research. ALBANY — The men had bare-ly settled in for a long night when their slumber was dis-turbed. Yet, they did not awaken when cold hands pried their bod-ies from pine beds, for theirs was a rest in death.
"Disinterred by unknown hand on the night of Nov. 24, 1864," read scripted burial records housed at the U.S. National Ar-chives and Records Administra-tion (NARA), provided by Civil War historian and Randolph County resident Dennis Ranney, for five Confederate States of America soldiers who were once buried at the 2.5-acre Camp Chase cemetery. The camp, es-tablished Aug. 1, 1863, was also a federal prison.
••A. J. Hensley, 45th Battalion, Virginia Infantry, grave No. 507;
October 2018
••John W. Lester, 33rd Regiment, Tennessee Infantry, grave No. 510; ••Jonathan P. Lindley, 1st Confederate Infantry com-prising sol-diers from Georgia and Mississip-
pi in 1861, grave No. 511; ••Thomas J. Stephens, 19th Regi-ment, Louisiana Infantry (later in the 16th Regiment), grave No. 512; ••Hiram Bland, 1st Georgia Infan-try Regiment, grave No. 513. Two other bodies, in graves No. 508-509, were dug up. Stephen Jones, 1st Regiment, Florida Cav-alry, was reburied and that of Curtis Hooks, 59th Regiment, Georgia Infantry, was left behind.
There are 2,260 Confederate graves at Camp Chase. The story of the grave robbing was reported in Columbus-area newspapers as word spread of the incident. "It seems that a systematic ex-huming of dead bodies of rebel prisoners buried at Camp Chase has been going on for some time past, in order to supply a Medical College at Cleveland with sub-jects for dissection," reported the (Columbus) Ohio Statesman on Nov. 28, 1864. The well-known Dr. Joab R. Flowers was arrested in the matter. He was released on bail.
Despite the "repugnance of the community to body snatching (Columbus Gazette, Dec. 2,
Coming Events
October 9, 2018 - Regular Meeting of Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler Camp 863 - Masonic
Lodge, Conyers, Georgia
October 20, 2019 - Conyers Old Town Festival - All Day,
Old Town Conyers.
November 11, 2018 - 43rd An-nual Henry Wirtz Memorial Service - 3:00 pm, Anderson-
ville, Georgia
November 13, 2018 - Regular Meeting of Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler Camp 863 - Masonic
Lodge, Conyers, Georgia
1864)," the incident was forgot-ten to yellowed, archived papers.
The men, however, were not. "They buried him, and he didn't stay buried for six hours," said Thomas D. Houston of Ludowi-ci, descendant of Pvt. Hiram Bland, one of the five disinterred and stolen. Bland, of Bulloch County, was captured at Kenne-saw. It was Bland's second tour, as he had been previously sent home because of illness. "They dug him up and took him to Cleveland (Ohio)," Houston said.
Alan Marsh, cultural resources program director at Anderson-ville National Historic Site, said that "so far as I've ever seen, there was not any problem or suspicious circumstances or anything" in regards to grave robbing at the Andersonville cemetery, where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers are buried. The historian, who is vaguely familiar with the Camp Chase story, offered that "when you have a war-time situation and prisoners of war — as we've seen in the past and also in more recent times — unfortunate things sometimes happen that shouldn't." Andersonville, or Camp Sumter, as it was officially known, was one of the largest Confederate prisons established during the war. Cpl. Jonathan Lindley was cap-tured at the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864. He was taken as a prisoner of war to Camp Chase. Like more than 600,000 soldiers, Lindley,
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Grave Misconduct Barbara Rivera Homes
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GA. The event is spon-sored by the Alexander H. Ste-phens SCV Camp 78 in Americus, GA, and all people interested in our Southern Heritage are urged to attend. The guest speaker is Attor-ney and Army Re-tired Major Glen LaForce from Hil-ton Head, SC. Major LaForce has done re-search concerning Capt. Henry Wirz and his trial, and had articles published regarding this in the Confederate Veteran magazine in the 1980’s.
The musical group, Southern Sounds, will play Southern songs and church hymns at 2:30 p.m. pri-or to the Service. Col. Heinrich Wirz, the great grand nephew of
The 43rd annual Capt. Henry Wirz Memorial Service will be held at 3:00 p.m., Sunday, November 11, 2018 in the town of Andersonville,
In closing. I plan to attend as many of our events as I can, I hope to see you there.
Remember, This is Your camp, make every opportunity to attend
our monthly meeting, Your presence, and input is important.
Until then,
For the Southern Cause,
Mark Camp, Commander
radio station KBCN radio Conyers. They are interested and are for our cause, and will help get the word out about us.
We will be busy this month, 1st, we will be going to, and participating in the 200th Anniversary Walton Co. Heritage days at the Harris Homestead on Octo-ber 6th and 7th , then we will be having our monthly meeting on the 9th. At this meeting we will be discussing the Old Town festival, which this year is Octo-ber 20th. So mark your calendar’s, and plan on attending these events, People won’t know who we are unless we meet them halfway and invite them to talk to us face to face.
And folks, its not to early to start think-ing about, and talking about our annual Lee-Jackson dinner. This event is also an election year, so start thinking about who (if not yourself) you would like to have as officers of your camp.
Southern Ladies, and Fellow Compatriots,
Ahh, Fall, still warm days, and “cooler “ nights.
At last months meeting we had the honor of having as our Guest Speaker Mr. Charles Lunsford, Spokesman for the Georgia Division. And I’m going to tell you, if you missed the meeting, you missed a great one.
Charles spoke about monuments across the country that have been taken down that have been deemed “offensive “ to some people. The list is shocking, es-pecially when you find out the reason why. And the most amazing thing is, None of them are Confederate!
Quick reminder, Compatriot Lee Joyn-er invited us all to listen and call into,
Our Commanders’ Comments
PAGE 2 GEN. JOE ’S DISPATCH VOLUME 14 , ISSUE 6
Capt. Wirz from Bern, Switzer-land, plans to attend. For more information, please contact Capt. Wirz Memorial Service Chairman James Gaston
at [email protected] or at 229-924-7460 in Americus, GA.
By: Commander Mark Camp
43rd Annual Capt. Henry Wirz Memorial Service Add from: The Georgia Confederate
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to dig up or carry away a dead body" is offense enough for one to be "imprisoned in the cell or dungeon of the county jail, fed on bread and water only, not exceeding 30 days, or both, at the discretion of the court." That Flowers was released on bail is all that is known of his legal tangle. He went on to become a Columbus city council-man. "There's lots of questions of what did hap-pen to the doctor — was he penalized, was he (tried)," said Keesee, New Albany, Ohio, author of "Too Young to Die: Boy Soldiers of the Union Army 1861-1865." "We couldn't find any information. The court records are gone." "I do think there were more"
thefts, and at other camps, Ranney said. "But, I cannot document (that) and verify the other soldiers."
Less than five years after the Confederate graves were emptied, another incident was recorded. "I heard today that two of our boys had to stay in the station house Thursday night. I guess they were trying to steal a sub-ject," Cleveland Medical College student James Mumford Woods wrote in his diary on Jan. 9, 1869. It is not clear who the "subject" was. The Cleveland Medical College, founded in 1834 as the Willoughby Medical College, is the parent of today's School of Medi-
cine at Case Western Reserve University.
Ranney suspects the Camp Chase thefts are the only such incidents of the war, but grave robbing as an enterprise dates back long before 1864. Where once cadavers of murderers were enough, "only upon the growth of medical schools ... did the need (for bodies) become a serious problem on both sides of the Atlantic," wrote David Bur-rell in his paper, "From Sanctity to Property: Dead Bodies in American Society and Law, 1800-1860." It's estimated that in London, from 1809-1813, 1,211 adult bodies were sold, Burrell wrote. In April 1788 there was the New York City "Doctor's Mob," which occurred when the community heard about grave robbing. The Medical College of Georgia, which was closed during the Civil War, has a well-documented history of grave robbing by "resurrectionist" Grandison Harris, a Gullah slave bought for $700 in Charleston, S.C., ac-cording to a June 21, 1996, story in The Augus-ta Chronicle. Not until 1887's Anatomical Act was the dissection of human bodies legal in Georgia. Harris was paid to furnish the school with cadavers. In 1989,
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about 32 years old at the time, did not come home alive from the war that pitted brother against brother. But Lindley's body didn't return either. "I found his widow's pension records, and I saw that he had died up there," said David McDonald of Powder Springs, great-great-grandson of Lindley. "So, I figured he was buried up there." The corporal died of pneumonia on Nov. 23, 1864. Records show he was disinterred a day later. "Nobody had any knowledge of (the theft). All we knew is that he had died," said McDonald, who began researching Lindley as a high school-er in the 1970s. Delving further into re-search and old books, McDonald found that "(these) didn't show him buried anywhere." Later McDonald found a note among the widow Lindley's things referring to stolen bodies at Camp Chase a day after Lindley's death. "A light went on," McDonald said. "There were (five) guys who died right around my ancestor, and none of them were buried there either.
"I started sending e-mails — 'Hey, what's going on ?' Nobody want(ed) to talk about it. Then Dennis (Ranney) heard of (it) or saw something ... and he took off with it," McDonald recounted. Ranney, from Ohio and who has studied the war for more than 40 years, was fascinated by the body-theft theory shared by historical lecturer Marlit-ta Perkins on Jim Martin's Civil War site, www.history-sites.net. After more than 300 hours of research and compiling more than 1,000 pages of historical material, Ranney does not doubt that the men's bodies were sold. "Once I found out what happened to these soldiers," said Ranney, 52, "I wanted to take care of them the best I could." "Walking through the graveyard now, sometimes soldiers will tell their stories by their names," Ranney said. "But for 140 years, these soldiers have been de-nied (a soldier's respect) because their names are lost."
Jeff Yoest of Brig. Gen. Roswell Ripley Camp No. 1535 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, out of Worthington, Ohio, said the camp "is in the process of possibly doing some kind of recognition" for those soldiers.
Ranney was aided directly and indirectly by many, including Perkins and Dennis M. Keesee, whose great-great-grandfather served in the same Ohio regiment as Ran-ney's. Ranney, interim director of S.H.A.P.E. (Southern Heritage Advance for Preservation and Education) uses the alias Dennis Brooke for research purposes. He splits his time between New Albany, Ohio, and Randolph County. Ranney cited a record by Camp Chase Prison Cmdr. and Ohio State Attorney William Pitt Richardson in an essay he wrote, "The Ghoul of Camp Chase, the Honored Citizen of Columbus, Ohio."
According to information on pages 1161-1162 of the Official Record Series 2, Vol. 7: "On the night of the 24th instant the bodies of six deceased prisoners were stolen from the graveyard attached to camp where prisoners only are buried. I arrested the perpetrators of this outrage." Flowers was quoted in several Columbus-area papers, including the German-language Der Westbote, as saying that the cadavers were in need at the college and "that the bodies were those of rebels, who were fit for nothing but dissection!" Houston, whose ancestors waited for Bland to return home from the war, suspected for some time that the soldier's body was stolen and sold. "They could at least let him die in peace, (but) they was too greedy for the money," Houston said in a recent interview from his office at Fort Stewart. The Ohio law books of 1841 state that "digging up, or attempting or aiding
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Grave Misconduct Barbara Rivera Homes
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more than 10,000 bones belonging to bod-ies dissected at the college between 1838-1912 were discovered at the school, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in July 1994. As recently as 1999 and 2002, directors of willed-body programs at two U.S. universities were suspected of selling body parts, which is illegal. And early this year, the former owner of Noble-based Tri-State Crematory, Ray Brent Marsh, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after con-victed of improperly burying bodies. Marsh plead guilty to 787 counts that in-clude theft and abuse of a corpse.
Today, the Medical College of Georgia receives about 50 requests per month from people wishing to donate their bodies to the college for research, said David E. Adams, director of ana-tomical donations at the school. No bodies are paid for, and certainly not stolen, Adams said. "I personally have a big problem with robbing graves," he
said. "Graves are sacred and they should be respected."
Descendants Houston and McDonald, and researcher Ranney, say they just want to set the record straight. "I have no hate for what Dr. Flowers did ... that was 150 years ago and it's over with. I think the story needs to be told," Houston said. Himself a soldier — an army sergeant in the Korean War — Houston relates to his ancestor not only through bloodline, but through sense of duty and honor. "Hiram Bland was a patriot, like a lot of others," he said, and through a sense of the reality those left behind face. "My great-great grandfa-ther ... his wife was left with seven chil-dren to raise, 100 acres and some cattle," Houston said.
McDonald "grew up about half a mile from where (Lindley) grew up." "I felt kind of close because that's where I live,"
he said of Powder Springs. There are Lindley descendants in Georgia and Ala-bama, McDonald said. Lindley's house, in which McDonald's grandmother grew up, was recently torn down.
On May 29, Worthington, Ohio, Sons of Confederate Veterans, will hold its annual memorial service for all soldiers that died at Camp Chase. The bones of the five stolen soldiers' have yet to be found.
P. O. Box 82718 Conyers, GA. 30094
MAJ . G EN . J OS EPH W HE EL ER CAM P #863, CONY ERS, GA.
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Grave Misconduct
Barbara Rivera Homes