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| http://madison.illinoisgenweb.org/prison.html |
The prison contained 256 cells and was originally built to hold 900 inmates. However, the population averaged approximately 1,200 throughout the three years it was open during the war. By the time the prison closed in July 1865, over 13,000 prisoners, soldiers and civilians, had passed through its gates. The structure was dismantled except for one corner, which still stands today. It is located at Broadway and William. Stones from the walls were used for buildings around the city and are still noticeable.
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| Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh |
Smallpox Island
As with all prisons, overcrowding was a problem. And it's highly doubtful that officials improved the horrid conditions that led to the initial closure of the the facility. Inmates were also exposed to extreme climate changes where the summers were hot and humid and the winters cold and bitter. Poor living conditions and malnutrition, combined with a harsh environment, led to fatal diseases. Prisoners and guards alike succumbed to pneumonia, dysentery, and rubella. But an outbreak of smallpox in 1863 claimed the most lives.
As the smallpox epidemic raged, infected prisoners and guards were quarantined on an island near the Missouri side of the Mississippi River called Sunflower Island. It was later dubbed "Smallpox Island" and contained an old structure that inhabitants utilized as a shelter and makeshift hospital. As can be expected of a location where the terminally ill were sent to die, burial trenches began to appear in a graveyard. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 1,000 to 5,000. One source stated that between 6 to 10 prisoners died per day on the island.
Smallpox Island was actually two islands which merged together. It flooded in early 1865, and the remaining 60 or so prisoners were removed to another island while their dead comrades disappeared beneath the waves. The location of the cemetery was lost and forgotten until 1935 when workers constructing the Melvin Price Lock and Dam No. 26 discovered some of the graves.
A Macabre Scene
A reporter for the Alton Evening Telegraph went out to investigate the scene of the discovery and published his findings on July 23rd.
Intertwined tree roots held the bones in the crumbling soil of the bank of a lagoon dredged in the Missouri shore....the falling Mississippi had receded and revealed several skulls...The tree under which the bones were buried was a tall maple. Small roots had fastened tentacles securely about the bones, holding them though the land beneath caved downward into the lagoon....a flat stone that resembled a marker was found nearby. The stone was found three feet under the earth a short distance from the tree.So what happened after these remains were discovered? Construction of the dam continued. No scientists were called in. Nothing. So the dead kept their secrets. Today, they lie beneath Alton Lake (or Pool) created by the dam.
In 2002, a monument to the dead of Smallpox Island was erected downstream from where the island lay. It is across the Mississippi River at the Lincoln Shields Recreation Area in West Alton, Missouri.
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| Smallpox Island Monument with the location of Alton prison in the background to the left of the monument Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh |
(As an aside, this area is the location of a near duel that was supposed to have been fought in 1842 between Abraham Lincoln and James Shields who was offended by the content of some letters written by Lincoln and Mary Todd. Shields, though, called off the duel because Lincoln chose cavalry sabres as the weapons which gave him a considerable advantage due to his height.)
There are over 200 names of men.....and one woman.
In early 1909, newspapers carried a story noting that the United Daughters of the Confederacy was seeking the location of the grave of a woman soldier buried at Alton. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer of August 14th, 1909, "Details regarding this Southern amazon are meager, and much of the information that has reached the Daughters of the Confederacy is hazy hearsay." The group didn't have much to go by, including a name, until they noticed Dunevant's in a record book containing a list of prisoners buried at Alton. So they assumed she was the woman soldier whom they sought. Therefore, it was Dunevant's grave they were seeking. Ultimately, the group was unsuccessful in their quest to locate her final resting place, but thanks to the construction of the dam, researchers now know where she is. She's under Alton Lake with the others who died on Smallpox Island. And I can't help but wonder if those were her bones discovered in 1935 that had tree roots wrapped around them.
Dunevant wasn't really the one they were looking for anyway. More on that later. In the meantime, here is Barbara's story:
Barbara Ann Dunevant: Smuggler, Gun Runner, Prisoner
As it turns out, Dunevant wasn't a soldier. She was a smuggler. Before the war in 1860, she was living with William Dunnivant in Crittenden County, Arkansas, about 20 miles from Memphis. Twenty-seven-year-old William, whom I assume was her husband, was a laborer born in Tennessee. Barbara Ann was 22. Interestingly, she was born in Indiana. Thus far, I have been unable to find anything else about their history. There are several William Dunevants with a variety of spellings who served in Arkansas and Tennessee units, but I can't say definitively if Barbara's William is one of them. There is even a conscript named William T. Donevant who also died on Smallpox Island. However, his residence was listed as Randolph County, Missouri.
How did a poor, illiterate woman end up at Alton? On May 28th, 1863, Dunevant was caught trying to take a "...large amount of goods...including four Navy revolvers beyond the Federal lines at Memphis Tennessee, and into territory under rebel and insurrectionary control. All in direct violation of the Regulations of the Treasury department and existing military orders."
Barbara Ann pleaded guilty at her court martial trial and explained that poverty drove her to accept a large sum of money from an unidentified man in exchange for carrying the revolvers beyond the pickets. She also claimed she could not read, which is confirmed by the 1860 census report, and was therefore unaware of the Federal regulations. Her pleas of ignorance were for naught though as she was convicted and sent to Alton where she arrived in July or August 1863. (RG 153, Judge Advocate General Court Martial Case File LL 621 for Barbara Ann Dunavan, National Archives).
Barbara Ann was sentenced to be confined for the remainder of the war, but she never lived to see the end. Soon after she arrived, she got caught up in the smallpox epidemic raging through the prison and was banished to Smallpox Island where she succumbed to the disease on September 28th, 1863.
Tragic Circumstances
Even though Dunevant did not give her life for her country on a battlefield, her death is nevertheless tragic, especially considering the fact that her impoverished state drove her to accept a perilous mission. She was also bolstered by a false sense of security. Apparently, the unnamed man who enticed her to carry the concealed pistols ensured her that there was no danger involved in the task at hand. She believed him and ultimately paid for that mistake with her life.
Was There a Woman Soldier Who Died at Alton?
Another tragic part of this story is the fact that Barbara Ann Dunevant (and all of the different spellings) has forever been labeled a woman soldier when she clearly was not. So where does this link to military service come from? The Daughters of the Confederacy have been blamed for figuratively promoting Dunevant from civilian to soldier. Even a Confederate prisoner of war, Captain Thomas Pinckney of the 4th South Carolina Cavalry, is guilty of advancing the false narrative when he later suspected that the woman soldier with whom he had been a POW was Dunevant. He said in his memoirs, My Reminiscences of the War, that he never learned her identity. But when he saw the 1909 newspaper article about Dunevant, he just assumed she was his fellow POW.
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| https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/hearts/patriotism |
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| Thomas Pinckeny POW at Point Lookout; from Fold3 |
However, that was a mistake. Pinckney was captured at the Battle of Haw's Shop (or Enon Church) and spent time at Point Lookout before transferring to Fort Deleware and then to Hilton Head before being exchanged at Fort Pulaski, Georgia. He never spent time in Alton, and Dunevant never spent time in any of the prisons Pinckney was confined. There was indeed a woman soldier imprisoned in Point Lookout the same time as Pinckney. And that was Jane Perkins.
Obviously, there are mistakes with these garbled accounts with Barbara Ann Dunevant at the center. Yet there always seemed to be something else present with this story, a missing part of the narrative. And then I came across an obituary in the Alton Evening Telegraph from August 2nd, 1904, that provided a very important piece of this puzzle. It was for Michael Gleason, the man who buried the dead Confederate prisoners of Alton.
Confederate Cemetery at Alton
When the bodies were buried, they were marked with wooden stakes, which eventually deteriorated. Over time, the cemetery fell into disrepair and was even used as a cow pasture. In 1907, the Commission for Marking Graves of the Confederate Dead attempted to identify the graves using a record book from the archives of the War Department, but the task was declared impossible. Since individual graves were not going to be able to be marked, an obelisk was erected in 1909 to honor all of the Confederate dead buried there. It includes bronze plaques with over 1,300 names of those who died at the prison and at Smallpox Island. Civilians were excluded. In 1911, the graves were graded over and leveled. Grass grew over them, and now the sites are lost to history.
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| Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh |
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| Sources claim that a woman soldier lies somewhere in this rolling field that is the Confederate Cemetery located on Rozier Street in North Alton Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh |
The Daughters of the Confederacy Had it Right....Sort of
Considering that the U.D.C. chapters involved were local, they were undoubtedly privy to Gleason's story. It was at least somewhat circulated because even when Gleason's wife died several years after he did, her obituary referred to her as the widow of the only man who knew the location of the grave of the woman soldier of Alton (Alton Evening Telegraph, June 16th, 1910). So it's not as if the U.D.C. heard about Barbara Ann Dunevant and decided to posthumously transform her into a soldier. Rather, they already knew there was a legitimate woman soldier who died there. Members of the U.D.C. saw Dunevant's name in the record book that the commission was using in 1907, and since hers was the only one they recognized that was feminine listed among the dead, they assumed she was the one whom they sought even though documents clearly list her as a civilian. And that was their mistake. Gleason had passed away several years prior, so he was not around to provide assistance.
By December 1909, the Alton Evening Telegraph was on the right path of correcting the garbled stories that appeared earlier in the year. An article appearing on the 27th now concluded that there were two women soldiers who died as prisoners at Alton. A reporter, looking for their names on the tablets of the newly-erected monument, noted their absence and concluded:
If the names appear there, they are disguised by using only initials of the given names, and therefore it cannot be definitely known whether or not they were included in the list of whose names are put there. Some confusion as to their proper names has arisen, and this may account for the failure to identify them.....[I]t is evidently no part of the record from which the names were taken, or they were not marked as women.
Another Female Civilian Who Died at Alton
There was at least one more woman who died while imprisoned at Alton. Like Dunvenat, she was a civilian and a smuggler. Mrs. W.F. Reynolds of Mobile was arrested at Vicksburg August 18th, 1864, for smuggling quinine and sent to the military prison. She died there of unknown causes March 18th, 1865, and was interred in a Catholic burying ground even though male civilians were buried in the Confederate cemetery. It is unknown who buried her, but if it was Gleason, then it is curious as to why Gleason's boss, Captain Henry W. Hart, allowed him to bury this woman in the Catholic cemetery and not the soldier woman. Perhaps the military status was the difference. Perhaps Hart had given in to Gleason's demands by the time Reynolds died. It is also curious as to why the U.D.C. believed Dunevant to be the soldier and not Reynolds unless the difference was her marital status. Or if her marital status was not noted on the list of names the U.D.C. utilized, then perhaps they assumed Reynolds was a male due to the presence of initials only. On the other hand, Barbara Ann Dunevant’s full name appeared in the records making it easier to pick her out as a female. Reynolds was not the woman soldier because, like with Dunevant, documents clearly show that officials were aware that she was a female civilian when she arrived at Alton. This is not the case with the woman soldier whose gender was not discovered until she died.
So, like the U.D.C, the Telegraph sort of got it right. There were three women who died at Alton, but only one was a soldier. Dunevant and Reynolds were civilians, which is why their names are not on the monument in the Confederate cemetery. As for the soldier, hers is probably there, but it would be a male alias.
What Kind of Conclusions Can We Draw?
1) Dunevant was never a soldier and never disguised herself as a male. Nothing was ever mentioned of it in her court martial case. She was clearly a civilian only. And actually, she was just one of several female civilian prisoners at Alton.
2) Officials knew Dunevant's name, when she died, how she died, and where she died. She is fairly well documented in Alton's records. Although, the Daughters of the Confederacy only had access to a mere list of names and not the details of the individuals on it.
3) Gleason maintained the woman soldier's grave years after the war, which means that it couldn't have been Dunevant's grave. Hers was lost underwater with the rest in 1865 when the river rose over Smallpox Island.
4) Gleason was contracted to inter the dead at the prison cemetery in North Alton. There is no documentation that he ever buried any on Smallpox Island. The prisoners and guards more than likely took care of that horrid task. So he probably didn't know about Dunevant anyway.
5) There were actually three women who died while imprisoned at Alton. W.F. Reynolds and Barbara Ann Dunevant were civilians. Reynolds is buried in a Catholic cemetery while Dunevant’s grave is under Alton Lake created by the construction of a dam there in 1935. The other was a soldier and was buried in the Confederate Cemetery located in North Alton.
And this newly-rediscovered woman soldier wasn't the only one confined at Alton. But I will save that for another post.
Until next formation.....rest.
Other Sources:
http://madison.illinoisgenweb.org/prison.html
http://www.lib.niu.edu/2007/ih030708.html
http://www.altonweb.com/history/civilwar/confed/
http://www.springhousemagazine.com/v7n4/smallpox.htm
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