The June 2012 meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday, June 7, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of May:
Financial report for the month of May 2012, as follows:
Do you have a family member that
is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership
in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful
gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $20.00
Patron Annual Membership $30.00
Life Membership $250.00
Contact our Secretary, Barbara Hitch, at [email protected],
about a gift membership.
On June 7, 2012, Don Huber, Alton
Township Supervisor and President of the Board of Directors and
Acting Sexton of the Alton Cemetery made a presentation on the
Alton Civil War Prison.
The Alton Penitentiary was built in 1833 and was the first building
in Illinois built with state funds. The money was raised from
the sale of some salt marsh lands in current Saline County.
Alton was platted in 1818 by Rufus Easton. Benjamin Godfrey started
the Alton-Sangamon Railroad in Alton in 1832. He got it as far
as Godfrey and lost his first million dollars getting it up from
the river out onto the prairie. Alton was incorporated in 1837;
this year marks the 175th anniversary of that incorporation. Elijah
Lovejoy was murdered November 7, 1837.
The prison opened in 1833 and was built with prison labor. The
prison was built from limestone quarried from the bluffs near
where the Indians had painted the Piasa Bird. It started out with
26 cells and had 296 cells when it finally closed. The convicts
were contracted to the quarries along the river as a source of
income for the prison. The prison was a typical state-run institution
- it was designed to hold prisoners 18 years of age and older.
William Hess was the first prisoner, he was 16!
In 1857, construction was begun in Joliet on what would become
Statesville Prison. By 1860, all the prisoners had moved from
the Alton Penitentiary to Joliet.
Prisoner number 83, William Moffet, from Sangamon County whose
crime was manslaughter, was sentenced to eight months confinement.
Prisoner number 84, Isaac Bell, from Sangamon County whose crime
was horse stealing, was sentenced to five years confinement! In
December 1838, Mr. Bell escaped from the Alton prison and stole
the warden's horse.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, neither side thought the
war was going to last very long and made no provisions whatsoever
for dealing with prisoners in any way, shape, or form. Two prisons
were opened in St. Louis that became absolutely chock full of
people arrested in Central and Southeastern Missouri.
Since Missouri was a border state, all the males in the state
were required to take an oath of allegiance to the Union. If you
did anything contrary to martial law, which had been declared
in Missouri, you were in violation of your oath and technically
you could be shot - especially if you joined the Confederate Army.
They did not shoot anybody but they put a lot of them in prison.
The war in Missouri was a war of attrition. The local Provost
Marshal might have been the local sheriff who had a grudge against
his neighbor or his neighbor had property he coveted. So he would
accuse his neighbor of being a Confederate sympathizer, put him
in prison, and take his land. Things quickly got out of hand.
For example: Your son joined the Confederate Army and came home
to visit. If you were glad to see him and fed him supper, the
next day the Provost Marshall could show up and say you had aided
and abetted the enemy, take all your horses, and burn your barn
down. The next day the Confederate Army might show up and say
you gave horses to the Union forces and burn your house down.
The two prisons in downtown were quickly filled. These prisons
were at Gratiot Street - the old McDow Medical College, and the
second prison, a series of wooden barracks, was built on an old
slave-trading pen about where the new Busch Stadium is located.
On December 31, 1861, General Henry Halleck sent Lt. Col. James
McPherson to Alton to inspect the Alton Penitentiary for use as
a military prison. He reported that it could probably be put back
in shape for about $2,300. They started fires in all the stoves
trying to dry it out, which was futile - it never dried out.
The first prisoners arrived on February 9, 1862. The Alton Telegraph
ran a story when the first prisoners arrived that stated "Altonians
were amazed how similar they looked to their own sons." The
first prisoners came from Fort Henry. When Fort Henry fell, about
2,000 people were taken prisoner. Fort Donnellson fell a few days
later and they had 17,000 soldiers they did not know what to do
with.
The prisoners from Fort Henry were sent to Alton by packet boat;
Fort Henry was on the Tennessee River. This group included Brigadier
General Lloyd Tilghman. The General did not stay in the prison;
he stayed in the Alton House Hotel along with his staff. Officers
were paroled to the city limits of Alton as long as they were
here. This caused all kinds of trouble. There was a Southern sympathizing
tailor in town. If you were an officer in the Confederate Army,
he would give you a brand new uniform free of charge. So there
were all these sharply-dressed Confederate officers walking around
town, sitting in hotels or bars, doing basically whatever they
wanted. The Union soldiers standing guard in the prison were thoroughly
upset about the situation. To solve the problem, the Confederate
officers were sent to Jefferson Barracks and confined to riverboats
there.
There was a major escape from the Alton Prison in 1862. Thirty-six
prisoners escaped by digging a tunnel about 60 feet in the very
rocky soil. They all got away but two, both were caught in Jersey
County, Illinois, one in Fidelity and one in Jerseyville. The
one in Fidelity got shot; the one in Jerseyville was hung for
murder, having shot a man after escaping.
There were never more than 800-1200 prisoners in the prison at
one time. This prison was designed with 296 cells. The warden's
house and several outbuildings were also used to house prisoners.
One of the outbuildings was reserved for women that were imprisoned
and their children. There were two or three women who died while
prisoners, one died on Smallpox Island and one died in the prison.
During the period of the war, there were 11,700 soldiers who went
through the prison; there were about 1400-1500 civilians who were
arrested for all kinds of things. There were also Federal prisoners
who had been convicted of rape, theft, murder, etc. These prisoners
were sent to Alton because they had cells to lock them in.
The cells were seven feet by four feet. There were nine men and
three bunks per cell - three men per bunk. It is no wonder the
prisoners got sick. During the Civil War, 620,000 people died;
two of every three deaths were caused by disease. The mortality
rate at the Alton prison was about 14%. Sandusky Island, Ohio,
was about 4%, while Elmira, New York, was about 20%, and Andersonville,
Georgia, was about 33%.
In November 1862, Henry Farmer was a prisoner in Alton; he was
the first to die of smallpox. Alton became an incubator for smallpox
throughout the prison system because of the transfer of prisoners
to other facilities. Smallpox Island opened in August 1863 and
closed in March 1865 when the Mississippi River overran the island.
For a time, there was a woman and her five-year-old daughter who
acted as nurses on Smallpox Island. She and her daughter had both
had smallpox and were thus immune. They lived on the island while
the woman was a prisoner and nursed the other prisoners.
Many of the prison guards were from units that could not be used
elsewhere: the 77th Ohio - they retreated in disorder at the Battle
of Shiloh; the 37th Iowa - known as the greybeard unit. They were
the fathers and grandfathers of young men who had volunteered
in Iowa and asked to be allowed to form a unit so they could serve.
They were mostly used as prison guards but had no idea how to
run a prison. They also elected inept leaders. The 37th Iowa was
replaced by the 10th Kansas Infantry in January 1864. Their leader
was William Weir from Carlinville, Illinois. In the 1858 Gazetteer
of Macoupin County it says that "It is unfortunate that Judge
Weir's social skills do not match his legal skills." It shows
in his performance at Alton. There was a petition to run him out
of town and there was a petition to keep him. The reason for the
second petition was that the 10th Kansas had a fantastic band
and they gave band concerts every Saturday night. Weir was eventually
court martialed and cashiered (removed from the army). He went
back to Kansas and became part of the 7th Cavalry but only lived
until 1867. Several of the members of the 10th Kansas became part
of the 7th Cavalry. Four of them were with Reno at the Battle
of the Little Bighorn.
An estimated 1747 people died in the Alton prison of various causes:
Smallpox and variola - 368, Pneumonia - 229, Typhoid - 161, Dysentery
- 78. The records do not always give a cause of death. Of those
who died, 1354 were Confederate soldiers, 210 civilians, and 183
Union soldiers. Some of these Union soldiers were prisoners but
the majority were guards at the prison. The monument in the Confederate
Cemetery on Rozier Street in Alton, Illinois, has only the names
of the Confederate soldiers on it. The legislation passed by Congress
in the late 1800s proscribed the marking of the graves of Confederate
soldiers who had died in northern prisons. There is a monument
near the location of Smallpox Island that contains the list of
names of those who died of smallpox and were buried on the island.
The Alton prison was demolished starting in the 1880s and the
stone was used in other buildings in Alton and elsewhere, as railroad
track filler. One Confederate soldier who had been a prisoner
in Alton returned in 1935 and asked for, and was given, one of
the stones to use as his gravestone.
This interesting presentation was well received and generated
quite a few questions and comments from the audience.