ANDERSONVILLE, GA CIVIL WAR POW CAMP AND MUSEUM

Today, April 4th, we decided that it was time to do some sight seeing, especially since Gary knew of a POW Camp and Museum from Civil War era near where we are parked for this week.
It is always fun driving through different parts of the country.  This is mostly farm country, so much like Ohio except for the red clay!!

Not the road that we meant to be traveling.
But we followed through!

In 1865 the prison closed and the US government established the national cemetery which continues as an active national cemetery to this day.  The National Prisoner of War Museum opened in 1998 to tell the stories of all American prisoners of war.

Part of a stockade much like that used during the Civil War.

This is a good portion of the interior of the stockade area.

The main source of water was but a tickle much of the time and was estimated to have adequate water for 10,000 prisoners. But it was insufficient for the 33,000 men who were held here at one time in it's history. Much of it was contaminated by human waste leading to thousands of cases of dysentery. 

Providence Spring monument.
As the stockade was constructed a spring on the side of
the hill was covered. During a heavy rainstorm in 1864,
a flash flood knocked down parts of the stockade,
uncovering the spring.  It was considered providential
by prisoners as it appeared at a time of
intense heat and thirst.  The monument was erected in 1901.

While no major escape plans succeeded, prisoners did attempt to depart by tunneling and various other methods.

It would be so difficult to put in words the pictures of conditions at this camp, as were many camps during most of our war histories!!  Unless you've been through it, it would be difficult to imagine the conditions even with these pictures and narratives on film. 

So all I am going to give you are some of the primary captions and historical articles.

There were many physical articles from the era and pictures of such:

As we were leaving the museum to drive through the cemetery, there was a young chap taking an oath to become a junior park ranger. 

As we had seen in other cemetery grounds, there are monuments that different states in our country involved in the wars have since erected in honor of their state's dead soldiers.

Massachusetts monument in the center,
Ohio's monument on the right. 

Wisconsin's monument,
the largest  noticed as you first
enter the park.

Illinois Monument

New York Monument

We could not get close enough to see the state name on a few of the monuments.  Heaven forbid if we get out of the car to walk to them!!.  But it would be me dragging my feet!!   I usually do well with the zoom lens though.

We did drive through Americus GA on our way, but only stopped at Walmart for a few minutes. We did tour Americus in previous trips through Georgia.

Attractive water tower

These next two pictures were from the Resort that we just left in Silver Springs, FL.  I passed this on my walk about the park.  This area had the only park bench!!

Have to honor Canada as well as the United States.

This little church we saw on our little trip north from Ocala, near Hawthorne where we had lunch with my cousin and her husband.  I forgot to put this in that Blog, and it was too pretty and freshly painted to leave it out.  I would have loved to see the interior.

We don't have anything else planned for the rest of the week, but stay tuned.