- Joined
- Aug 2, 2019
So I've been looking for a guard at Andersonville who I could research and write about for a while, and I may have found one, thanks to @lupaglupa's posting about Newspapers.com's free weekend access.
There are two articles in June, 1890 in the Leavenworth (Kansas) Times about a police officer who has been discovered to have been a former guard at Andersonville, and there is a big ruckus about how he should be fired. To their credit, the police chief, at least for the length of these two articles, seems to stand by his man, but he's getting slandered in the press and the residents of the local soldiers home have written a petition demanding that he be removed.
This looks like a perfect fit for a chapter in the book I'm working on about stories from Andersonville that most people are not aware of. But I still have a couple of obstacles to get around, probably the biggest one being that the two articles never give the man's name - he's always just referred to as "Matthews" with no first name.
Fold3 has a C M Matthews in the 55th Georgia, but again, not enough of a name to trace. Can anyone find this man's first name, or anything else about him?
Other smidgens that I can get from the article are that he is reportedly 42 years old in 1890, which would make him born around 1848, and that would mean that he was 16 years old when he would have been a guard at Andersonville. And he had a wife.
As near as I can tell, there's no article about the resolution of this incident - was he fired? Did he stay? did he leave town? Was he harassed? - but I have an email in to the Leavenworth Public Library asking if they can find out anything more. Reading the articles, it seems like there should be more articles about it - the June 14th one doesn't sound like the first time the issue is raised, but this is all Newspapers.com came up with.
This is the first article, dated June 14th. I know that the 55th Georgia wasn't raised expressly to guard at Andersonville, so read with an awareness that the accuser is intentionally inflammatory. And, oh, yeah, none of the "Former prisoners" mentioned in the article actually appear on the NPS's database of Andersonville Prisoners, and only one of the names of the guys mentioned on the Union side appears on Fold 3, and that guy was discharged from a NY regiment in 1862, about a year and a half before Andersonville even opened. So I'm sensing a conspiracy at work, here.
Any input would be gratefully appreciated.
Gary
Oh
There are two articles in June, 1890 in the Leavenworth (Kansas) Times about a police officer who has been discovered to have been a former guard at Andersonville, and there is a big ruckus about how he should be fired. To their credit, the police chief, at least for the length of these two articles, seems to stand by his man, but he's getting slandered in the press and the residents of the local soldiers home have written a petition demanding that he be removed.
This looks like a perfect fit for a chapter in the book I'm working on about stories from Andersonville that most people are not aware of. But I still have a couple of obstacles to get around, probably the biggest one being that the two articles never give the man's name - he's always just referred to as "Matthews" with no first name.
Fold3 has a C M Matthews in the 55th Georgia, but again, not enough of a name to trace. Can anyone find this man's first name, or anything else about him?
Other smidgens that I can get from the article are that he is reportedly 42 years old in 1890, which would make him born around 1848, and that would mean that he was 16 years old when he would have been a guard at Andersonville. And he had a wife.
As near as I can tell, there's no article about the resolution of this incident - was he fired? Did he stay? did he leave town? Was he harassed? - but I have an email in to the Leavenworth Public Library asking if they can find out anything more. Reading the articles, it seems like there should be more articles about it - the June 14th one doesn't sound like the first time the issue is raised, but this is all Newspapers.com came up with.
This is the first article, dated June 14th. I know that the 55th Georgia wasn't raised expressly to guard at Andersonville, so read with an awareness that the accuser is intentionally inflammatory. And, oh, yeah, none of the "Former prisoners" mentioned in the article actually appear on the NPS's database of Andersonville Prisoners, and only one of the names of the guys mentioned on the Union side appears on Fold 3, and that guy was discharged from a NY regiment in 1862, about a year and a half before Andersonville even opened. So I'm sensing a conspiracy at work, here.
Any input would be gratefully appreciated.
Gary
Oh