While in Danville,
I had time to drive around and shoot some pictures.
Hope you enjoy.
They're at the Episcopal Church in Danville.
This is the old train station,
now a satellite of the Science Museum of Virginia.
Here's my last post about
the train station.
I took a trip down to Danville's Lee Street Cemetery.
There's some beautiful stained glass there
and interesting statuary.
Little Ella was 2 years old
and her baby brother or sister
probably died at birth,
since the baby has no name.
Makes you wonder what happened to them.
Adjacent to the Lee Street Cemetery,
is Danville National Cemetery.
During the Civil War,
Danville was an important transportation hub.
Its railroad was used to transport a great number of
recruits, supplies, and war materials and provisions
to the Northern Virginia Army.
During the Battle of Manassas in 1861,
AKA the Battle of Bull Run,
the first major land battle of the Civil War,
the Confederates found themselves with large numbers
of captured Union prisoners which were
transported to Richmond.
By 1864, General Sherman had
effectively destroyed the railroads,
thus disastrously depleting the South's resources.
The population of Richmond could no longer
feed and clothe themselves,
let alone their prisoners.
To reduce the high prison population
in the Confederate capital,
the POWs were relocated to
six tobacco warehouses in Danville.
These facilities held thousands of officers and enlisted men,
living in overcrowded conditions.
About 1400 men died, the principal causes of death
being pneumonia, smallpox,
scorbutus (something like scurvy),
and chronic diarrhea.
The Danville National Cemetery was established
in December 1866 and
the original interments at the cemetery
were the remains of Union POWs
who died in the Confederate Prison in Danville.
Many of the bodies were buried in mass graves.
These graves were later exhumed
and the bodies buried underneath individual markers.
Lovely pictures.
ReplyDelete