Rock Island

johan_steele

Regimental Armorer
Retired Moderator
Joined
Feb 20, 2005
Location
South of the North 40
Rock Island Illinois, in the Civil War it was one of the many Union POW Camps that dotted the North. An area w/ an intriguing history it is today a military research post. It is home to the Rock Island Arsenal Museum, a Natianal cemetery and a CS cemetery. The area where the POW camp was is now warehouses... but the Arsenal Museum tells the story of Rock Island from the time the fort was built there to the modern Army Research Post.

Perched in the middle of the Mississippi it is a pleasant place to visit. One of the River Locks sits astride the at Rock Island and tours of it's workings are available to those who are interested. In the surrounding area there is a host of historical sites. The Birthplace of Jim Cody better known as Buffalo Bill is only a few miles North, Museums abound on the Iowa side of the River and a park and museum built by the CCC in the 1930's dominates the landward side of Rock Island. Modern Shopping and entertainment abound on both sides of the River. Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and a host of other ethnic restraunts compete with each other to provide a multicultural dinning experiance. But most impotrantly there are several superb ice cream shops. The area abounds in Nature, being a nesting area for the Bald Eagle, seeing one isn't difficult in the proper season.

THe area is enjoyable and a pleasant place to visit.
 
GG Grandpa Elihu Weaver was blessed with a free tour and lodging in this fine facility in the very chilly winter of 1863-64 after being captured in Philadelphia, Tennessee. He was soon transferred to Point Lookout, Maryland, and apparently was not enamored with Rock Island. (He didn't think much of Maryland either.)
 
G-G Uncle Presley Gross spent a little time there. He lost most of his toes to frostbite because the commander wouldn't allow the inmates to have the warm clothes that were sent to them. This had always registered with me as a myth until I visited Andersonville, where the records confirmed that Uncle Presley was telling the truth.
 
Here's some more of my blarney?

Being in prison during the civil war was no bed of roses. Elihu was extracted from the beautiful fall weather of eastern Tennessee and hauled to a literal freezer in northern Missouri. Two months in below 0 degrees weather was followed by a scenic train ride to the Maryland peninsula at Point Lookout for yet more vacation. He swapped ice cubes for mosquitoes and smelly salt air on the Chesapeake Bay. His hosts in both cases were not very friendly to a young mountain lad who had simply been defending his southern heritage and his mountain home. Admittedly he had been trying to kill some Federal soldiers when he was captured, but that was not enough reason for all this time away from home. Elihu’s Weaver family had been in Virginia and western North Carolina since his ancestor Samuel Weaver had married the widow Ann Jackson at Martin’s Hundred in 1621. His family had fought the Indians and the British not to mention the trials of life on the farm for more than 240 years by the time this war broke out. The Weavers and their Ashe County neighbors weren’t about to give that away to what they considered an invading army.

The prime enemy in these civil war prisons was disease. Those who were wounded brought one set of problems because there was very little in the way of bacteria control. The other culprit was moisture and a very pronounced lack of central heat and air! Typhoid and pneumonia were two of the main culprits. Apparently his youth and strength and a little help from his guardian angel allowed him to avoid the typhoid, but pneumonia, according to family tradition, cost him a lung. That tradition holds that he walked home almost a year after the war was over. Was he still recovering from his condition? As of this moment, I don’t know.
 
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