Point of Rocks Hospital

Point of Rocks Hospital. The Bermuda Hundred Campaign. Shortly after the Army of the James landed in Bermuda Hundred, a field hospital was established here at Point of Rocks. The hospital originally consisted of tents set up in the orchard around the Strachan House. The tents were 50 feet long and contained enough cots and bunks to accommodate 40 or more patients. Sometimes when crowded, patients had to lie on straw bags with a blanket on the bare ground., As the Bermuda Hundred Campaign gave way to the Siege of Petersburg the hospital developed into large complex of wood buildings. The hospital was organized into divisions to distribute patients according to disease. Dr. Moses Greeley Parker, a surgeon here, described one division as consisting of 17 wards, each 80 feet long, 20 feet wide and 8 feet high, built of logs and grouped like a horseshoe on the bluff. Other divisions contained 8 wards that were each 250 feet long, 30 feet wide and 15 feet high. These large wards could accommodate 180 patients each. It is estimated that over 3,000 patients would have been here at any given time., In addition to the hospital, a Federal cemetery was established here that contained over 2,500 soldiers by the end of the war. Among them were over 850 United States Colored Troops. A handful of Confederate soldiers were also buried here. After the war, the dead were moved to the City Point National Cemetery. The wall around City Point cemetery is constructed of stone that was quarried from the bluff that gave Point of Rocks its name., An Unusual Patient , According to the Regimental History of the 2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery an unusual patient arrived here in March of 1865. ”A sergeant of the 10th New York Heavy Artillery who was taken sick on the picket line, was carried to the Point of Rocks Hospital early in the morning of March 6th, where he was delivered of a bouncing broth of a boy...For the next three or four days the event created a great question among the two regiments as to its parental relations. ”, There were rare accounts of women impersonating men during the Civil War. This patient at Point of Rocks was apparently one of those occurrences., This sign was sponsored by Charles Lee, Rockville, MD