News-Info-Alerts

Re: 140 Years Later - Confederate POW Returns Home

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 24, 2002

"Confederate POW will return home

By Amelia A. Hart
Morris News Service

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. - Nearly 140 years after he died in a Union prisoner of war camp in Massachusetts, Lt. Edward John Kent Johnston is coming home.

Johnston, said to be the last Confederate prisoner of war buried in New England, will be reinterred in October in north Florida's Bosque Bello Cemetery at the feet of his wife.

The ceremony will bring an end to a journey that has seen Johnston reburied three times since he died Oct. 13, 1863, in Fort Warren on George's Island, Mass., in Boston Harbor.

"This is intended to be, and will be, Edward's final move," said Ben Korbly, Johnston's great-grandson. "My mother is pleased. She has always wanted him back down South."

Johnston was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1827, and his family immigrated to the United States when he was young. He married Virginia Papy on July 1, 1852, in St. Augustine, Fla. In early 1863, he enlisted in the Confederate Navy, leaving his wife and five children in Fernandina Beach.

He was assigned to the CSS Atlanta, which was captured by the USS Weehawken and USS Nahant after a battle in Wassaw Sound near Savannah in the early hours of June 17, 1863. Johnston was imprisoned at Fort Warren on George's Island, where thousands of Confederate prisoners were housed.

He died of pneumonia, and his shipmates bought a large granite gravestone to mark his burial place, according to Dana Chapman, a Civil War re-enactor and historian in Atlanta. Mr. Chapman has been active in efforts to bring Johnston back to the South.

Because of post closings, Johnston's remains were moved from Fort Warren to Deer Island, then to Governor's Island, both in Boston Harbor, and then in 1939 to Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass., northwest of Boston.

But with the support of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Georgia and Florida, Johnston's body will be coming home.

After hearing about Johnston's story, George Hagen Jr., a Confederate Navy re-enactor in Albany, Ga., agreed to underwrite the cost of the lieutenant's disinterment and reburial in Fernandina Beach.

Johnston will be disinterred and reburied with full military honors in the presence of family members, state officials in Massachusetts and Florida and hundreds of Civil War re-enactors.

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