Term of Award
Fall 2019
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Social Sciences (M.A.)
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis (open access)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Committee Chair
Ryan McNutt
Committee Member 1
Jared Wood
Committee Member 2
Iain Banks
Abstract
In the closing months of 1864 Confederate prison authorities were forced to evacuate the large stockade prisoner of war (POW) camps at Millen and Andersonville, Georgia in the face of General Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’. While attempting to evade Union forces, approximately 5,000 POWs were sent along the Atlantic and Gulf railroad in south east Georgia, stopping just outside of the town of Blackshear. For three weeks prisoners and guards camped along a small tributary of the Alabaha River with only a few steaks to mark a deadline between them. No formal prison enclosure or fortifications were constructed and while escapes were frequent the majority of the prisoners would endure their stay before continuing down the line to Thomasville. In this thesis, I continue the investigation of site 9PR26 by further delineating the boundaries with metal detection survey. By examining the artifact patterning I attempt to determine the general layout of the camp and why this particular location was chosen as the site of a makeshift prison by its commander.
OCLC Number
1147875482
Recommended Citation
Partridge, Colin H., "Preserving the Memory of those Perilous Times: Archaeology of a Civil War Prison in Blackshear, Georgia" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2027.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/2027
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
