Hey! I have another Andersonville question for you. Do you know if, in the cemetery records, there are dates reported for the burials? I've been playing with the Millen burial data and there are a few dates associated with specific burials but their spotty as are the "plot" identifiers (Trench and burial number) but it is possible to narrow down some of the death dates to a timespan of a couple of days. It would be interesting if the same could be done for the descendants of the "unknowns" if they had a better idea of the location of their loved one.
The original death register is more or less in chronological order of death, from Adam Swarner's death at the end of February, 1864 to Knud Hansen's at the end of April, 1865. The first Unknown is in grave number 61 (I happen to know that because 61 is my "lucky" number and I took a walk down the early rows to figure out when the first unknown occurs the last time I was down there.)
The problem comes when there are multiple unknowns buried the same day. The worst day there are 127 men buried, and I can't remember how many of them are unknowns. Add to that the fact that if a man died late in the day, then his body was laid out by the south gate and not collected until the following day. This happened with the raiders - it's well documented by diaries that they were hanged on the evening of July 11, but in the Register of Deaths, they are listed under July 12th's deaths. Add to that the "Reported to Have Died's" who actually aren't there at all. For Memorial Day one year, I decided to mark the occasion by taking 100 "Reported to have died" soldiers from Massachusetts and decided to see if I could figure out what happened to them - a full 40% were actually buried at other National Cemeteries - the men survived long enough to leave Andersonville, only to die at Millen or Florence or Salisbury. But the comrade who reported their death said they last saw them at Andersonville, say, at the end of August, so that's what got recorded in the company's muster roll. Surprisingly, quite a few of them actually WERE apparently buried at Andersonville, but with a slightly misspelled name or the wrong regiment number or state abbreviations.
And then there's the guy who was on the list of men returning to the prison site to dedicate a state monument and there was a big scramble to get his name off of one of the graves before he got there, less he see it and become unduly distressed. Clearly someone was buried there - it just wasn't him.
Then there are the 5 or so bodies that were found in the stockade site years after the war had ended, frequently after a torrential rain. Two were found when they went to grade the site for one of the monuments (Michigan, maybe?) to make sure that the monument stood straight. These bodies were, of course, relocated to the National Cemetery.
Theoretically, it should be possible that if you have an account that a man died on a particular day, and there's only one "Unknown" in the register of deaths for that date, you would think that you could safely say that that unknown was him, but it's just not that easy.
Nor are there enough physical remains in the cemetery to do DNA testing. I talked to an archaeologist from Tallahassee who did a ground penetrating radar survey of the cemetery and stockade site and he said that no bodies remain.
I'm heading back down to Georgia June 12th. Do you need anything while I'm down there?
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