Those Who Remain

Those Who Remain. . While the Alton Military Prison operated here during the Civil War, there were approximately 1,570 deaths among the soldiers and civilians and about 200 deaths among the Union soldiers who acted as their keepers. Burials occurred in three places, the old penitentiary burial ground, the Alton Cemetery and on Smallpox Island. The stories of each of these cemeteries is told on this panel., Confederate soldiers, prisoners classified as guerillas and civilian prisoners who died while at the Alton Military Prison were buried in a plot set aside by the State of Illinois for use as a burial ground for inmates who died at the Illinois State Penitentiary. Thirty burials took place here before the penitentiary closed in 1858., Prisoners were buried in trenches, sometimes two to a casket and the graves were marked with numbered wooden stakes. Following the war, the cemetery was largely forgotten and... was used for a time as a cow pasture., In 1897 the United States Congress passed legislation that provided funds for the marking of the graves of Confederate soldiers who died while in Northern prisons. When the government's representative came here to supervise the erection of grave markers, the marking stakes had long disappeared and no record existed of individual grave locations, Through the urging of the local Sam Davis Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy, the existing monument was erected. The names of 1,354 Confederate soldiers were included on the monument, even though some of the burials are on Smallpox Island., No provision was ever made to mark the graves of civilians who died in Union prisons andWide shot of marker and its surroundings. as a result there is no mention of the civilian dead at their final resting place., Union soldiers who died during their service here in Alton were buried in marked graves in a portion of the Alton Cemetery called "Citizens Ground." This included soldiers who served here as a garrison unit, guarding prisoners in the Alton Military Prison, Union soldiers who died while being held prisoner for various offenses and a small number of soldiers who died while traveling through Alton on their way to war., In 1867, Congress passed the National Cemeteries Act and provided for proper burial of Union soldiers who died while in service. The bodies were buried in the ground now known as the Alton National Cemetery, There are 512 burials in the cemetery, 204 from the Civil War era, including at least two members of the U.S. Colored Infantry., In August of 1863 a smallpox quarantine hospital was opened on an island near the Missouri shore. Prisoners who developed smallpox were rowed to the island (or walked over the ice) and stayed there until they recovered or died. If a prisoner died on the island, he, or she, would be buried in a small cemetery created on the island. The hospital was abandoned in March of 1865 when high water flooded the island., Following the war the cemetery was largely forgotten until construction of Lock and Dam 26 unearthed the cemetery in 1935, The graves were covered over and again forgotten until a new lock and dam was constructed and demolition of the old structure threatened to unearth the remains once again. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commissioned a researcher to assist in the location of the island cemetery. The Smallpox Island Monument was dedicated in April, 2002 and contains the names of 256 men and one woman who are believed to be buried near that spot.