Was Inspired by Tonight's Zoom Talk by Maxfield to Dig Up My Camp Douglas Dig Pix

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Oct 22, 2014
I was inspired by Derek Maxfield's interesting talk on Elmira to revisit my pictures of one of our digs into Chicago's Camp Douglas, circa October 2014. The archeological work was organized by the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation, founded by David Keller.

As Maxfield mentioned about the Elmira POW camp, Camp Douglas is largely unknown to locals. It seems that prisons, and especially the associated deaths, don't have mass appeal. The 4,000-7,000 bodies from the Camp are interred in one of the largest mass graves in the Western Hemisphere, in a cemetery south of the University of Chicago. The Camp was built on the property of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who died in 1861, and is himself interred just above Lake Shore Drive, near where we were digging. Along the Illinois Central RR tracks that brought the prisoners north.

We were lucky enough, on the last day of that particular dig project, to uncover a "B" kepi badge, a rare CW find for the Midwest, much less Chicago. It was sitting at a depth of about four feet. You can see from that particular pit how far we had to dig to get down to the 1860s. That pit also yielded buttons consistent with period underwear. A subsequent dig uncovered an intact Union eagle button. Prior to becoming a prison, Camp Douglas trained Union soldiers, including some of the first African American soldiers.


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This is a large area within the inner city. So there are older three-story brick homes, tall steel apartment buildings, a school, a strip mall, a church, and now even a Culvers, which was just built on what I believe was the smallpox cemetery. This is (long) walking distance from Downtown Chicago, so it is in a densely populated area.

That said, between the school where I was digging, and the Draper & Cramer massive apartment complex, there is a lot of grass. We've been able to dig in the school yard and people's small back yards. Property giant D&K has not allowed digging. They, like the Culver's developers, are probably worried that finding human remains would complicate construction. Many in the area have expressed reservations over any special historical status because of how that might further affect development. (The camp was above the cross street in the aerial picture below from the 1970s, near the top; it's in the big city now).

The old Civil War Hospital (period painting below, next to a recent picture), which was built across from Stephen A. Douglas's Oakenwald estate Camp Douglas in 1864, still exists, and is owned by the Catholic Archdiocese. Douglas is buried near that small building on the right in the painting, which I think still exists (See Douglas grave column below).

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Wow - really hard to create any type of historic site amidst all that. Does the local government (Chicago?) have a requirement that archeological digs be done in this area? Albany, NY, near where I live, requires all construction within a designated area to have a dig when any construction work is scheduled there. They've unearthed some amazing stuff due to that rule.
 
I was going to jokingly reply, Come on, this is Chicago! As in the business of Chicago is business. You can see from the archeology pit that Chicago covered over 1860s Chicago with four feet of development--and that was by 1900 I believe.

But, actually, we're very careful in digging around certain areas. Around the Chicago Historical Society, which is in Lincoln Park--which was City Cemetery during the Civil War, so the spot where they interred the Camp Douglas dead initially--archeologists precede even water pipe repair, since they're always uncovering human bones. When they supposedly disinterred and moved everyone, including the Camp Douglas dead--well, they really didn't.

And Alderman Ed Burke, our patron for some of the Camp Douglas digs, was active in promoting City archeology. But he was indicted for corruption. I notice there's no emoji for laughing hysterically on this platform. :wink:

We might have the premiere archeology school in the world at the University of Chicago, but Indiana Jones and his compadres set off for Egypt and Iraq--not much call for them here.

Albany is older, so there's more of interest to find. I'd be curious to see what they find. Chicago is about building. Constant, incessant building. Little time for too much care. In addition to which, Chicago is touchy about our history. It is a bit morbid. And in Chicago fashion, bigly morbid. The Fort Dearborn Massacre saw the garrison, women and children wiped out down the street from me. Blocks the other way, the capsizing of The Eastland in the river killed 850 people. A few blocks from there, the Iroquois Theater fire killed 600. And that's all just Downtown here. Camp Douglas, by some estimates, might have produced 7,000 bodies by some estimates. So Chicagoans are more into ghosts and curses than archeology...
 
Hadn't realized that the folks at the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation had this overlay of the Camp on a satellite image of the neighborhood; it's very densely populated:

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David and the Foundation look to be on track for organizing a traveling exhibit discussing Camp Douglas and showing off dug and donated artifacts. The group's latest newsletter has more about that and some other interesting stories about CD. Their Website generally has a lot more on it than I remembered and is worth a look.
 
I grew up in the Chicago area. I don't return very often, but next time I will check out these cool CW sites. I think people forget that the war effort had to happen somewhere, and it wasn't all on battlefields.
 
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