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10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
tomc
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Date: December 22, 2012 12:02PM
Did you know that there are 10,000 Confederate dead in Oak Woods cemetery Located in the southside Woodlawn neighborhood at 67th Street? They died of various causes and diseases while being held prisoner at Camp Douglas at 31st and Southpark(King Drive) during the Civil War.I spoke to the owner of a funeral home that was located at 31st Street and who happened to be Black and considered himself a historian who had all the records of the dead located in his own museum. He invited me to come there,but I never made it and he has since died.When I lived at 66th and Ingleside, as a youth, we often snuck into Oak Woods and used it as something of a playground. I often saw the monument that stands over a mass grave. We always kept an eye out for the caretakers who drove around in green trucks. I knew some kids who even went skinny dipping in one of the lagoons and the caretakers stole their clothes and would not give them back until they came out of the water.It was also a great place to sneak into on Halloween with some of the neighborhood girls. I guess that we were Hell-raisers when we were young. TomC
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
ambrosemario
(---.hsd1.in.comcast.net)
Date: December 22, 2012 02:54PM
In the early 70's we'd ditch school and drink beer there on warm spring days. The place is full of beautiful and interesting headstones and monuments. It was like walking through an outdoor museum. Often there were fresh flowers placed at the monument to Confederate soldiers. I always wondered who would do this more than 100 years after the war and so far north of the confederacy.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
Richard Stachowski
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Date: December 25, 2012 02:19PM
[b]Very interesting post. Not many people are aware of Camp Douglas and the cemetary where many are buried. Also Lincoln Park was a Rebel cemetary until they moved the bodies to Dunning. Some were buried there under Lake Meadows and some in Lincoln Park as well as[in Oakwoods. There is said to be hauntings at Lake Meadows./b]
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2012 12:43AM by Richard Stachowski.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2012 12:43AM by Richard Stachowski.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
Nudog
(---.dsl.emhril.sbcglobal.net)
Date: December 25, 2012 05:09PM
The funeral home mentioned above is the Griffin Famiy Funeral home, the gentleman was Ernest Griffin whose grandfather was a guard at Camp Douglas. The funeral was on land that once was part of Camp Douglas. Mr Giffin built a memorial war in the parking lot of the funeral home to honor those who were at Camp Douglas, both Confederate and Union. He daughter or granddaughter had purchased a home not far from the funeral that they found out was designed by Frank Lyold Wright.
Regarding Lincoln Park, it was the city cemetary - not a Confederate burial ground. Dunning, besides a burial place for the insane, was a potters field, so you do have Civil War veterans and victims of the Chicago Fire buried there. (Camp Douglas authorities would not have wanted to incure the cost of transporting the bodies from the south side to a cemetary on the north side, they looked for the nearest place to dump them. I am acutally surprised they did not just bury them on Camp Douglas grounds.)
Camp Douglas was not much better than Andersonville - instead of the Georgia heat throw in the Chicago winters. Add to that Southern boys with very little extra clothing or blankets for the winter.
Regarding Lincoln Park, it was the city cemetary - not a Confederate burial ground. Dunning, besides a burial place for the insane, was a potters field, so you do have Civil War veterans and victims of the Chicago Fire buried there. (Camp Douglas authorities would not have wanted to incure the cost of transporting the bodies from the south side to a cemetary on the north side, they looked for the nearest place to dump them. I am acutally surprised they did not just bury them on Camp Douglas grounds.)
Camp Douglas was not much better than Andersonville - instead of the Georgia heat throw in the Chicago winters. Add to that Southern boys with very little extra clothing or blankets for the winter.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
JimCina
(---.hsd1.in.comcast.net)
Date: December 28, 2012 10:09PM
I was not aware of Camp Douglas at all until a couple of years ago when I happened to see a marker for it on Google Earth. And I'm nearing retirement age.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
Richard Stachowski
(---.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
Date: December 29, 2012 12:47PM
[b]Yes and I never learned about it in history classes. It was at 33rd and cottage grove where 6000 died by starvation and freezing. That was right here on the south side of Chicago where Lake Meadows apartments stands.[/b]
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
daveg
(---.lightspeed.joltil.sbcglobal.net)
Date: December 30, 2012 12:08PM
Actually there were and still are Confederate soldiers buried in Lincoln Park, likely under the baseball diamonds on the south east end of the park.
See this detailed study of the subject here:
http://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/home.html
And I believe burials in Lincoln Park stopped well before the Chicago Fire in 1871. By then, Graceland, Rosehill, Oakwoods and other cemeteries had taken the place of Lincoln Park's 4 cemeteries.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2012 01:23PM by daveg.
See this detailed study of the subject here:
http://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/home.html
And I believe burials in Lincoln Park stopped well before the Chicago Fire in 1871. By then, Graceland, Rosehill, Oakwoods and other cemeteries had taken the place of Lincoln Park's 4 cemeteries.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2012 01:23PM by daveg.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
nordsider
(---.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
Date: December 30, 2012 12:53PM
Informative books: To Die in Chicago - Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas 1862-65 by George Levy (Published in 1999); and available at the Chicago Public Libraries.
Bygone Days In Chicago: Recollections of the "Garden city" of the sixties by Frederick Francis Cook (Published: 1910); and also available at the Chicago Public Library -- HWLC
Rally 'Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War by Theodore J. Karamanski
Prisoners of War at Camp Douglas, 1863
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10434.html
Camp Douglas
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/207.html
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2013 11:04AM by nordsider.
Bygone Days In Chicago: Recollections of the "Garden city" of the sixties by Frederick Francis Cook (Published: 1910); and also available at the Chicago Public Library -- HWLC
Rally 'Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War by Theodore J. Karamanski
Prisoners of War at Camp Douglas, 1863
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10434.html
Camp Douglas
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/207.html
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2013 11:04AM by nordsider.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
nordsider
(---.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
Date: February 08, 2013 06:30PM
Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation
http://www.campdouglas.org/
http://www.campdouglas.org/
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
Dunning1
(---.dhs.gov)
Date: February 08, 2013 06:35PM
Dwight Moody, founder of the Moody Church and the Moody Bible Institute, got his real start as an evangelist working amongst the prisoners in Camp Douglas. Another interesting sidelight is that Levi Boone, one time Mayor of Chicago and grand nephew of Daniel Boone, was implicated in a plot where the prisoners were going to attempt to break out of the camp and flee to Canada.
Re: 10,000 Confederate Dead In Oak Woods Cemetery
Posted by:
Richard Stachowski
(---.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
Date: February 08, 2013 08:38PM
[b]Very interesting. I hope they can produce some artifacts for us to see, I have been interested in Camp Douglas for some time. There doesn't seem to be and evidence of Camp Douglas left on the surface. Does anybody have knowledge of Grovelend Park and Woodland Park across cottage grove?[/b]
