I’ve told you this before: I love research! I’ve been fortunate to have taken a few research trips related to a novel or article I was working on. I once visited the riverboat museum in Marietta, Ohio. I went to New York City and visited the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, Ellis Island, the Police Museum, and a few other sites there. I’ve gone to ballparks to interview past professional players. I’ve been to living history centers and fairs and studied in many libraries and archives. This time I went to Johnson’s Island. If you’re not familiar, and I’d guess most people are not, it’s an island in Sandusky Bay, part of Lake Erie in Ohio.
Today Johnson’s Island is a residential community filled with summer vacation homes. It’s a small island connected by a causeway that costs you $2 to enter. So why go there? For most of the 19th century the island was virtually uninhabited. It was owned by a man named Johnson. At the beginning of the Civil War when the U.S. government was looking for sites for federal prisons, they looked to Lake Erie. They considered the other islands, but ultimately decided they were too busy. Johnson’s Island, three miles across the bay from the city of Sandusky fit the bill. They leased a section of the island and began clearing it. (A bonus for the owner who didn’t have to do it himself for later development of farmland.) This island became the prison for Confederate officers. Some enlisted men were housed there, but by far it was the place where they sent the officers. The island was so far north (not far from Canada) and isolated that the south was not able to rescue its officers.
Today, the only thing you can see that speaks to the island’s past is the Confederate cemetery. And what you see was put there at the turn of the 20th century. Before that there were wooden crosses and no fence.
So, you can imagine there is a story here!
We visited on the first day. In my next post I’ll tell you where we went after that, plus a little about the place we stayed, a trout club! (But we didn’t fish!)
I have been to Sandusky where my daughter-in-law was born, and rode on a jet boat ferry to Cedar Point, but never to the islands. I looked up several islands when we were going to go to one on family vacation, so I read about this island. If we decide to stay in Ohio when it is my turn to organize the trip again (in 2024), I would like to your a couple of the Ohio islands.
The dates on the cemetery sign says 1861 -1912. That was a long time after the war ended. Why were confederate soldiers still being buried there after 1865/66?
That’s a good question, Janice. I looked it up. The last burial was in 1865. I believe the dates refer to when the prison depot was begun (1861) and the date when the Daughters of Confederacy finished upgrading it with the fence, the statue, and the marble grave markers (1912)