Camp Lawton in Georgia

[SJU5]

I am trying to assist a FAG member who found out her GGG Grandfather was captured and sent eventually to Camp Lawton sometimes also called Ft Lawton ).

I am trying to find any information as to what happened to the prisoners there. As Shermans troops approached, all the prisoners were taken to Savannah, GA. But thats where the trail ends. I have researched this a lot through the memoirs of the 13th NJ which was one of the first units from the XX Corps to enter Savannah, but there is no mention of any Union prisoners being freed and moving North through the Carolinas towards Virginia.

I have found some evidence that this soldier died and was buried in Winchester National Cemetery in VA in March of 1865. But I am getting conflicting data on this too.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Copperhead-mi]

According to historian Lonnie Spears in his book Portals to Hell - Military Prisons of the Civil War (pp. 277-281), the prisoners from Camp Lawton (Millen) were transferred by train to Blackshear prison near Waycross, Georgia with some of those prisoners remaining while others were loaded on another train to Savannah believing that they were going to be exchanged, but when they arrived most prisoners were taken from the boxcars and transferred to another train that took them to Charleston, South Carolina. It was during this transfer that many of the prisoners escaped into the countryside.