Elmira’s Civil War Prison Camp

by Erin Doane, curator

As I looked back at the 151 blog posts we have produced over the last three years, I realized that we have never posted anything about the Civil War prison camp in Elmira.  We’ve done lectures and exhibits and programs about it but never a blog post.  Well, that’s going to change now.

Elmira’s Civil War prison camp, fall 1864

Elmira did not become the location of a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp out of the blue.  On April 23, 1861 the Governor of New York declared Elmira a military depot for western New York.  Two years later the U.S. Government named Elmira a military draft rendezvous.  What became the prison camp started out as one of the four training camps that were created to accommodate the influx of soldiers.  Each camp included barracks, drill fields, and artillery ranges. Over the course of the war 20,796 soldiers were trained in Elmira’s camps.

Rochester battery training at Camp Rathbun, 1863

When prisoner exchanges with the South stopped in 1863, Northern prison camps like Point Lookout Prison in Maryland became very overcrowded.  On May 19, 1864, Camp Rathbun, located on West Water Street in Elmira, was ordered to be changed from a training camp to a prisoner-of-war camp to take in the extra prisoners.  By that time, two of the training camps had already closed and the remaining two were mostly empty.  Over the course of the next two months, a 12 foot tall stockade fence, additional barracks, and a hospital were built to accommodate the arrival of Confederate prisoners.  Foster’s Pond lay at the southern edge of the camp.  It provided the prisoners with water for drinking and bathing but it quickly became a major source of disease.

Drawing of Camp Rathbun, late summer 1864

On July 6, 1864 the first 400 Confederate prisoners-of-war arrived in Elmira.  By August 18 the population was 9,262.  From the beginning, the camp was ill prepared and undersupplied.  A hospital with six wards was built to care for the prisoners but it was not staffed with a chief surgeon until early August.  Outbreaks of measles, scurvy, and waterborne diseases quickly overwhelmed the small staff.  The prison death toll jumped from 11 in July to 115 by the end of August.  Originally designed for 4,000 men in barracks and 1,000 in tents, the prison camp ended up housing nearly 10,000 prisoners at one time.  When a heavy snow storm hit on October 6, more than 5,100 prisoners were still in tents.  Shortages of food, warm clothing, and blankets made prisoners even more likely to fall ill.  One of the most heartbreaking things to me is that there was enough food to properly feed the prisoners but the government decided to cut rations in retaliation against the South for cut rations to Union prisoners.  The North cut rations to punish the South.  The South cut rations because it could not feed its own soldiers.

Elmira's prison camp, 1864

By New Year’s Day of 1865 all prisoners in Elmira were in barracks but the winter was particularly harsh. Temperatures dropped to 18 degrees below zero twice over the winter and nearly two feet of snow fell during a single February storm.  Prisoners were stilled called out for daily inspection despite the freezing temperatures and their lack of proper clothing.  Severe weather, poor sanitation, shortages of food and supplies, and a smallpox outbreak pushed prisoner deaths to a peak of 491 for the month March.  The spring thaw came with record flooding.  On March 15, prisoners retreated to the barracks’ top bunks as waters rose, washing away 2,700 feet of the stockade wall.  With the word of General Lee’s surrender in April, the prison camp began to shut down.  The last 256 prisoners left on July 11, 1865.  Of the 12,147 prisoners held at the camp, 2,961 never returned home.  Elmira had the highest death rate of any Union prison camp.

Prisoner inspection, early 1865

History Unshaven: Mustaches, Beards, and Mutton Chops, Oh My

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

 

One of the best parts of working in a museum is that you often accidently happen across really cool stuff.  A couple of weeks ago I was looking through our photograph collection for a photo for our Twitter page when I found something pretty strange (and naturally, irresistible): a photo of the 1954 Elmira Mustache Club.  A Mustache Club!  Glorious!  I knew that I had to do something with this item, so I'm dedicating this blog post to an examination of men's facial hair trends and technology.  The timing of this is somewhat serendipitous since we've just finished "Movember," a movement where men are encouraged to grow a mustache during the month of November to raise awareness for men's health issues. 

The inspiration: Elmira Mustache Club, 1954

Just like clothing or hairstyles, facial hair is fashion, and as such, it's styles go in and out of vogue over time.  There is a wide range of facial hair choices, more so than I initially realized (this is a handy illustrated list).  The popularity of these styles is influenced by politics, technology, religion, and other factors.  In American history, our earliest European explorers were generally a beardy sort.  Take a look at Henry Hudson, or Samuel De Champlain, or Giovanni da Verrazzano.  So much facial hair!  However, from Puritanical America on into the 18th century, facial hair fell out of fashion.  Take a look at some of the Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ben Franklin... so little facial hair. 

Things started to turn around in the mid-19th century, however.  Many cite Abraham Lincoln's presidential chin beard as the catalyst for a hairy renaissance of sorts.  By the late 19th century, facial hair was everywhere and in all forms: full beards, mustaches, goatees, sideburns (thanks, General Burnside), mutton chops, and more.   Mark Twain got in on the trend too with his epic 'stache!  Take a look at some of these examples from our collection.  These date from the late 19th century and show the impressive range of face fringe that local men were sporting.

A solid beard-mustache combo

"Your beard is good" (any Flight of the Conchords fans out there? Anybody?) Some nice forking at the end of this beard.

A wispy chin strap beard

A bushy chin strap beard

A handlebar mustache

A mustache.  This one looks like baleen to me.  Dude could filter some krill if he wanted.

Some nice mutton chop sideburns

Umm... I'm not fully sure what to call this....

Yet, the whiskered wonder of 19th century didn't last long.  The early 20th century, became a dark time for the hirsute.  In 1911, the Elmira Star Gazette published a special report on how Cornell banned freshman and sophomores from having mustaches, a privilege reserved for juniors and seniors only.

With fuzzy faces under fire, the Star Gazette even published the following anecdote suggesting that women would in the future outpace men in the facial hair game:

 

This fresh-faced trend was certainly due in part to changes in technology.  The straight razor gave way to safety razors, and then electric razors.

Straight razor (a bit too Sweeney Todd for my liking)

Duram Duplex trimmer circa 1920s

Gillette Tech razor, 1940s-1950s

Electric razor

 

By the 1950s and 1960s, the unshorn look started to come back in style (see the mustache club picture for evidence), and was embraced by the hippie movement.  Also, another strange beard revival happened across the country as cities celebrated centennials or other anniversaries.  Men joined the "Brothers of the Brush," a group who grew out their facial hair for these special local celebrations.  In 1961, the bewhiskered brothers helped Chemung County celebrate its 125th anniversary.

Brothers of the Brush pin

Today, beards, mustaches, and other forms of facial hair are again all the rage.  From the highly-stylized beards sported by hipsters to beard growing competitions (watch the show Whisker Wars), facial hair is again in the mainstream. 

 

 

       

How Museums Work: Accepting Donations

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

 

Every year, CCHS accepts hundreds of items into our collections.  Just this month we took in yearbooks and uniforms from the St. Joseph’s School of Nursing, a collection of barbers’ tools, and the records of the local chapter of the AARP.  We also rejected a number of offered items as well.  Why don’t we take everything?  How do we decide what to accept and what to reject?  Who does the deciding?  How does this museum thing work?

 

Like most museums, CCHS has space issues, as in we are constant danger of running out.  We can’t take everything offered to us because we simply would have no place to put it. 

 

I need more room.

Instead, we have to be selective about what we accept.  Everything we take has to meet certain criteria.  Firstly, it must fit within the scope of our collecting mandate.  Our Collections Policy, as laid out by our Board, states that “The collections of the Chemung County Historical Society, Inc, and interpretation of the history derived from them will focus on the unique aspects of life in the Chemung Valley region, from pre-history through the present.”  This means that we are obliged to reject those items which are not directly tied to our region, no matter how cool it would be to have them.  In most cases, we try to help the donor find a more appropriate home for their treasures.      

 

We also need to think about how offered items fit within our existing collections.  We already have four copies of Elmira’s Part in the World War and we don’t want another one.  What we do want are items which fill gaps in our collections and help us to tell new and interesting stories.  We also try not to duplicate the collections held at other nearby institutions.  For example, the Steele Memorial Library has a complete run of the Star-Gazette which is why we don’t bother collecting it ourselves. 

 

Yes, it's cool, but no more please.

Lastly, we consider the condition of the donation.  Our mission isn’t to store artifacts, it is to share artifacts and the stories they tell.  If an item is too damaged to be handled let alone displayed, then we probably don’t want it.

This is trash.

 So, who makes the decisions about what we do and do not accept?  As I mentioned, the Board as a whole establishes our collecting policies.  The staff, mostly the archivist and curator, perform the initial evaluation.  They present those items which they would like to accept to the Collections Committee.  The Committee is made up of Board members and interested members of the community and they make the ultimate decision about what to keep.