Johnson's Island

At a glance

Overview

Johnson's Island is a 300-acre limestone island in Sandusky Bay, about three miles from Sandusky, in Danbury Township. First owned by Epaphras Bull and called Bull's Island, it was bought by Leonard B. Johnson in 1852, and in late 1861 the Army leased part of it for a prison built from scratch for captured Confederate officers. From April 1862 to September 1865 the stockaded 16.5-acre compound held, by different counts, more than 10,000 or more than 15,000 men, up to about 3,200 at a time, guarded by the Hoffman Battalion and the 128th Ohio; a Confederate plot to seize the gunboat Michigan and free them failed in September 1864. After the war the buildings were sold, the island was farmed, quarried and briefly run as a resort, and houses now line its shores, but the Confederate cemetery survives, marked since 1910 by Moses Ezekiel's statue. The island has been a National Historic Landmark since 1990, and three decades of excavation have made it one of the richest Civil War archaeological sites in the country.

The name

Named for Leonard B. Johnson, who bought the island in 1852 and farmed it. Before that it was known as Bull Island, after its owner in the early nineteenth century, Epaphras Wadsworth Bull. (source)

Native American history

Archaeology on the island has turned up stone tools, the debris of tool-making, pottery fragments and scattered features left by prehistoric Indigenous people, whose permanent settlements in the Lake Erie area had largely been abandoned by about 1650; no specific culture or date is given in published sources. The 1916 Erie County history repeats a local tradition that the island was a favorite Native fishing-season camp and a place where captives were tortured; that claim is unsourced there and should be read as tradition. The island is part of the Firelands of Danbury Township, whose Native title was ceded under the Treaty of Fort Industry on July 4, 1805. In 1812 militiamen driven onto 'Bull's Island' by a storm scouted the peninsula before the Skirmish on the Peninsula with a Native war party.

• Prehistoric artifact scatter (stone tools, debitage, pottery): other, Johnson's Island, prison-site excavations, prehistoric, before c. 1650
• Treaty of Fort Industry cession of the Firelands: treaty, the Firelands, including Danbury Township, 1805

Stories

Building a prison from nothing

In the fall of 1861 Lt. Col. William Hoffman toured the Lake Erie islands for a place to hold Confederate officers. He judged the Bass Islands too far out to supply, and passed over Kelleys Island partly because its population and wine industry might tempt the guards. Johnson's Island, sheltered in Sandusky Bay and half cleared by Leonard Johnson's farming, won out. About 40 acres were leased from Johnson for $500 a year, and Hoffman set to work to open the prison by the spring of 1862. Unlike the converted penitentiaries and training camps used elsewhere, it was the first and only camp built from the start solely as a military prison. (source)

The Lake Erie Conspiracy

In September 1864 Confederate agents in Canada planned to free the island's prisoners. A man named Cole spent freely in Sandusky, courting the officers of the gunboat Michigan, the only government boat defending the island, and planned a drugged wine party to take her; the officers never drank, and Cole was arrested instead. On September 19 John Yates Beall's party, armed from a box of revolvers carried aboard, seized the steamer Philo Parsons, captured and scuttled the Island Queen at Middle Bass, and steamed toward Sandusky Bay. When no signal came from shore, Beall's men refused to face the Michigan's guns and fled to Canada. Beall was later captured near Suspension Bridge, New York, and several Sandusky men were briefly held on the island on suspicion of helping. (source)

The rat club

Captain W.A. Wash, C.S.A., held almost two years on the island, published his prison memoir in 1870. At the start of September 1864 he recorded a night when three rats were shut in his room and chased until daylight, and a Sunday afternoon when about fifty prisoners and a little dog caught forty rats, some to be made into 'chicken pie' and 'squirrel fry.' The 'rat club' had a colonel of the 7th Tennessee as president. (source)

The Ezekiel statue

On June 8, 1910, more than a thousand people gathered at the prisoners' cemetery for the unveiling of a statue by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Jewish sculptor who had attended the Virginia Military Institute and fought for the Confederacy. The Robert Patton Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned it, and Mary Patton Hudson of Cincinnati, whose brother had been a prisoner on the island, led the fundraising and drew the cord that lowered the flag covering it. General George W. Gordon of Memphis gave the address, and Union and Confederate veterans marched together in the parade. A newspaper reported that veterans of both armies were moved to tears. (source)

What the latrines kept

From 1988 to 2017 archaeologist David R. Bush led digs at the prison, first as salvage work ahead of development and later with Heidelberg University, school groups and field schools. Because each latrine was used only briefly before a new one was dug, the layers let researchers follow changes in prison life through the war. Hundreds of pieces of prisoner-made craft work, especially jewelry of hard rubber, showed the prisoners' artistry and commerce. The digs located the prison walls and ditches, the waterfront dock, the barracks blocks, the hospital and the powder magazine of Fort Hill, and brought up hundreds of thousands of artifacts. (source)

Timeline

• 1805: The Treaty of Fort Industry extinguished Native title to the Firelands, which include the island. (source)
• 1811: An attempt was made to found a town on Bull's Island, with village lots laid out and the port's custom house located there; it was soon abandoned. (source)
• 1812: Joshua R. Giddings, a sixteen-year-old militiaman, wrote home on October 1 describing a landing on Bull's Island in the middle of Sandusky Bay. (source)
• 1812: Epaphras W. Bull, the island's first owner and Sandusky's first collector of customs, died in Cleveland on October 6, aged 33. (source)
• 1852: Leonard B. Johnson bought the island, which took his name. (source)
• 1861: The government leased the island as a depot for Confederate prisoners, and on November 12 contractor William T. West took the contract to have the buildings ready by January 31, 1862; he used 1,500,000 feet of lumber. (source)
• 1862: The first prisoners arrived in April, guarded by Company A of the Hoffman Battalion, later part of the 128th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. (source)
• 1863: A December 7 inspection counted 2,381 Confederate prisoners, only 59 of whom were not officers. (source)
• 1864: Commandant William S. Pierson, a former Sandusky mayor, was replaced on January 18 by Brig. Gen. Harry D. Terry, and Col. Charles W. Hill took command on May 9. (source)
• 1864: Two large mess halls were added inside the stockade in August. (source)
• 1864: On the evening of September 18 Mary Marilla Stephens, 17, overheard Confederate plotters in a Sandusky rooming house and hurried to her sister-in-law's home; her brother Jefferson was a guard on the island, and the authorities were tipped off. (source)
• 1864: On September 19 John Yates Beall's men seized the steamers Philo Parsons and Island Queen, but called off the attack when their partner Cole failed to capture the gunboat Michigan. (source)
• 1865: Forts Johnson and Hill, built over the winter, became operational in March as the prison population peaked at about 3,200. (source)
• 1865: The prison closed in September. (source)
• 1866: The government sold the prison buildings on April 12, most of them bought by L.B. Johnson. (source)
• 1894: The island was first opened as a pleasure resort on July 16. (source)
• 1908: The Cincinnati chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy bought the cemetery. (source)
• 1910: Moses Ezekiel's Confederate monument was unveiled at the cemetery on June 8 before more than a thousand people. (source)
• 1950s: Residential building began, especially around the island's shoreline. (source)
• 1988: David R. Bush began archaeological excavations at the prison site, continuing until 2017 with Heidelberg University. (source)
• 1990: Johnson's Island was designated a National Historic Landmark. (source)
• 2001: The Friends and Descendants of Johnson's Island Civil War Prison was organized to preserve the site. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Johnson's Island
• johnsons-island.org: history
• johnsons-island.org: archaeology
• ss.sites.mtu.edu: johnsons island pow camp
• archive.org: standardhistoryo0001hews djvu.txt
• sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com: unveiling of confederate cemetery
• sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com: mary marilla stephens overheard plot to
• sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com: letter from epaphras w bull to zalmon
• archive.org: campfieldprisonl00wash djvu.txt
• ottawacountyhistory.org: east ottawa county
• thebeacon.net: danbury twp is site of first ohio battle in war of 1812
• kb.osu.edu
• en.wikipedia.org: Treaty of Fort Industry
• en.wikipedia.org: Firelands