Union POW William Frye/George Wilson

Fritz1255

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Joined
Apr 20, 2005
The attached picture shows part of an application for a pension filed by Ruth Frye Ingalls, the sister of two men from Maine who died in the Civil War. John Frye was in the Sixth Maine Infantry, while William Frye (who apparently served under the name George Wilson) was in the Navy. I have a copy of John’s records, but can find very little on William (born about 1838). According to a statement from their father, William Frye (aka George Wilson) “died in a rebel prison”. The only Confederate POW camp records I have been able to find are from Andersonville and Fort McHenry, and there is no William Frye or George Wilson listed who was in the Navy. There seem to be lots of entries for Confederates in Union POW camps, but not vice versa. Questions:

  • Are those the only POW records that exist from Confederate prisons? If so, my search may be over.
  • Can anyone help me with more information or where to find it?

Wm Frye Geo Wilson.jpg
 
More information would be helpful - year of birth, the town he lived, etc.

To answer the question of POW camps, Navy prisoners were held in multiple different camps. Most seem to have gone to either Andersonville or Camp Ford in Texas, depending on when and where they were captured, but you'll also find them at Salisbury, Libby, and other prisons.

There are patched together lists for some of the captured men from the other prisons. I know that there's a long appendices in Dr Louis Brown's book on Salisbury that names thousands of known prisoners there, Father Albert LaDoux has been compiling the names he can find from Florence, and Deb Wallsmith has hundreds of names of men that passed through Camp Lawton in Millen. Navy POWs were much less common that soldiers. A few years ago I tried to compile a list of every Navy POW I came across, and the list got to be about 400 long, with about half of these at Andersonville. I have 3 Wilsons, John, Henry and A, who all died at Andersonville, but none of them have the right first name. A Wilson served on the Southfield; Henry on the Water Witch, and John was a landsman, but i don't know the ship. No Fryes or Frys on my list. But there could be a lot of explanations for that - he could have been captured and died before he reached a prison; his father could have the wrong first name for the alias, he was at a prison that I haven't come across the records for yet, the person writing the records could have had lousy handwriting and messed his name up, or he died as an unknown.

The NPS database of POWs at Andersonville that you find online is also incomplete and frequently inaccurate. So just because you don't find your guy on the list doesn't mean that he wasn't there. (Could he have been a Marine instead? They served on Navy ships). Unless the name is wrong or he was captured after October, 1864, I don't think he was at Andersonville. The Naval POWs there hatched a brilliant and daring plan to save as many army POWs as they could, and when the order came for the sailors to leave Andersonville, they gave as many soldiers as they could the names and identities of sailors who had died so that they could smuggle them out of the stockade with them. So when you look at the list of the Andersonville sailors who were exchanged, it lists about 20 sailors who were actually lying ded at the cemetery at the time. Every now and then, I come across the name of a soldier who was saved this way and the alias that he used, but again, no George Wilsons on the list.

The other possibility is that he was a sailor, but not actually in the Navy. There were a couple of "citizen prisoners" at Andersonville who were apparently sailors but non-military. So far I've identified about 200 of these prisoners at Andersonville who were not military personnel, but again, your names don't appear on that list, and the vast majority of them were men who were working as teamsters for the Quartermasters Department.

I guess this doesn't find your man, but it leaves a lot of doors open. Two other thoughts would be to look for him on the 1870 and 1880 census to make sure he was really not on them - sometimes guys were reported as dead who really weren't, and sometimes false information would be given on pension applications, either accidentally or intentionally, for a variety of different reasons.

Yours,

Gary Morgan
Author of The Andersonville Raiders
 
Navy POWs were much less common that soldiers.

Totally true - there wasn't much of a Confederate Navy. So-called "Commerce Raiders" attacked Union shipping (to good effect), took crews off as prisoners and burned their ships and cargo.

They didn't have a way to cope with prisoners and usually just put them on a passing vessel or ashore and let them go.

A good question for the OP is why William Frye was masquerading as George Wilson? Underage maybe and lying about it? I'd begin looking at Maine's birth records and make sure there's record of this person and how old he was.
 
I think the answer to @Drew's question about the use of an alias comes from records we have under his original name. William Frye of Cutler, Maine, age 23, enlisted in the US Navy at Boston May 30, 1861. But he failed to appear at his assigned ship. It seems likely that he chose an assumed name at his next enlistment to ensure he wouldn't be punished for his prior failure to report.

A man using an assumed name may change other information about himself too so looking for George Wilson by birthplace (New Brunswick, Canada) or hometown (Machiasport or Cutler, Washington County, Maine) may not help us. BUT - the May 1861 enlistment tells us that William aka George had blue eyes, brown hair, and stood 6 foot 3/4 inch tall. Those facts are tough to change.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of men named George Wilson who served in the Navy during the War. I'm slowly going through them looking at height etc.
 
Thanks so much for your replies! Here's another piece of data. This is apparently a record of draft eligible men from the area in 1863. William Frye is the first on the list, and is listed as "dead", late of the U. S. Navy. His birth year, according to the 1860 census, was 1837 or 1838, since he is listed as 22 years old. What I found especially odd about his serving under a different name is that the "Declaration for Pension" form shown in the original post has a spot for "under the name of". His residence is shown as Machiasport or Cutler, Maine. The family moved around quite a bit within that rather small area of eastern Maine.

Frye Draft Records3.jpg
 
Unfortunately that record doesn't fix a date for his death. The original entry is different than the notes of death. Still, it does add to the family story that he died during the War.
 
To further add to the confusion, there are two Naval records that show William Frye enlisting in the Navy at both Boston and Bew York an May 30th, 1861. H failed to appear at his ship in New York. I guess he couldn't be in two places at once. I'm as confused as Vinny Barbarino on "Welcome Back Kotter".

Wm Frye Navy NY.jpg


Wm Frye Navy Boston.jpg
 
I'm going with the theory that there were two guys with the same name. Boston to New York is too much ground to cover in one day. In my family, I have a great grandmother, grandmother, two aunts, four cousins, a sister in law and a daughter all named "Mary Gorman." Maybe we're dealing with similarly named cousins?
 
I'm going with the theory that there were two guys with the same name. Boston to New York is too much ground to cover in one day. In my family, I have a great grandmother, grandmother, two aunts, four cousins, a sister in law and a daughter all named "Mary Gorman." Maybe we're dealing with similarly named cousins?
No, both William Fryes were listed as being 23 years old from Cutler, Maine. Frye is a big family in Maine, but not quite that big. Far more likely that two different men enlisted using that name, but I have no idea why. Back in those days they probably didn't have to present their Drivers Licenses when they enlisted, which means you could use just about any name you wanted. Maybe some kind of bounty jumping scheme?

Another possibility is that there was some kind of clerical error. Both of these pages actually came from the same book, and seem to be in the same handwriting. It looks like this book summarized enlistment data from all over, so maybe some got copied more than once?
 
No, both William Fryes were listed as being 23 years old from Cutler, Maine. Frye is a big family in Maine, but not quite that big. Far more likely that two different men enlisted using that name, but I have no idea why. Back in those days they probably didn't have to present their Drivers Licenses when they enlisted, which means you could use just about any name you wanted. Maybe some kind of bounty jumping scheme?

Another possibility is that there was some kind of clerical error. Both of these pages actually came from the same book, and seem to be in the same handwriting. It looks like this book summarized enlistment data from all over, so maybe some got copied more than once?

A bounty jumping scheme is an interesting speculation and is certainly possible. Know also that cursive writing in the 19th and through the early 20th centuries were taught to pretty high standards.

It can be hard to distinguish one person's handwriting from another's, because teachers demanded everyone's look the same. Just a thought.
 
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