========================================================
The Yankee soldier, who had meager possessions, must have been proud of his ring and its distinctive diamond-shaped centerpiece.Somehow, the size-11 ring was lost, discarded or left behind, only to be swallowed by the earth on a rise near Millen, Georgia.
Untouched by human hands for nearly 150 years, the ring recently was discovered by archaeology students who have unearthed more artifacts at the site of Camp Lawton, a Civil War stockade and prison.
The Georgia Southern University team is finding personal items that will help tell the desperate story of Union soldiers who tried to stay alive while food was scarce and disease rampant.
"The camp is as rich in information as we thought it was," said Kevin Chapman, a graduate student who last spring found the first of what promises to be an astounding yield of artifacts.
The university in Statesboro Thursday unveiled more than a dozen of the 60 to 70 items uncovered last month. The school's museum also has acquired what's believed to be the only surviving letter from a prisoner at the short-lived camp.
The recent finds include a pocketknife, buckle, a Michigan-made token used for trading and a couple of keys.
The man's ring and a uniform or cap badge were found within 10 feet of each other, according to Chapman. The badge also includes a diamond feature.
The Georgia Southern team believes the diamonds may represent the Union's III Corps, which saw action in numerous battles, including Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, before a reorganization in March 1864 saw it merged with other units. The corps used a diamond on its flags and insignia.
"They were so proud of their service they wore badges long after it disbanded," Chapman said of the III Corps veterans.
Chapman says if that portion of the camp is shown to have housed veterans of the III Corps, descendants may one day be able to gaze at the precise spot where an ancestor lived.
"You can touch that ground and connect to 150 years before," he told CNN.
Chapman found the precise location of the slave-built stockade last year and, in the soil beneath tall pine trees, the first of nearly 300 artifacts recovered at the site of the Confederacy's largest prison.
The first find was detailed this time last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Georgia Southern University.
The prisoner artifacts were located on federal property -- the Bo Ginn National Fish Hatchery. The camp's location also extends into state property, the adjoining Magnolia Springs State Park, where the Confederate commissary, hospital and commander quarters existed.
Only archaeologists and other officials are allowed on the fenced-in dig site on the hatchery grounds.
This discovery of so many Civil War-era items -- including a smoking pipe, uniform buttons, a picture frame, coins, utensils, bullets and objects fashioned by Union prisoners -- is unparalleled for many reasons, archaeologists said.
Brock this is an amazing find. Will post and spread the word. I love unearthing history, especially in the USA.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post my friend.
So do I and thanks.
ReplyDelete