Research Trip to Johnson’s Island

Johnson’s Island is a very small island in Sandusky Bay in Lake Erie in Ohio. Never heard of it? Many people who live nearby haven’t either. As I was searching for inspiration for my next novel, I learned that a Confederate Prison was in place here during the Civil War. I went to nearby Fremont, Ohio, to the Rutherford B. Hayes library to do research about three years ago. Fremont, as you might have guessed, was the home to President Hayes. The house, the grounds, the library, are all impressive. It was a cool place to visit even without doing research. I’d heard there was a baseball game played at the Johnson’s Island prison and it sounded interesting. Details about everyday life were recorded in several prisoner’s diaries, but probably the most interesting was that of William Peel’s who died at the prison shortly before the war ended.

And then something happened, the mysterious germ of a thing that can launch a whole novel! At the library I poured through several diaries and accounts about Johnson’s Island. Then I spotted a mention about two black slaves involved in a snowball fight (which was one of the leisure activities the prisoners engaged in). Why would they have been there? They could not be enslaved in Ohio. So I kept digging through the information and I read that the slaves there had “refused emancipation.” Even the librarians were puzzled by that. So, of course, I researched some more.

Many slaves joined their masters as they went off to war, charged with keeping their masters safe and looking after them. So many of the men who fought in that war on both sides were very young and their parents probably wanted to safeguard them as best they could. Some of the slaves of course ran off once they were in the north. Many stayed behind enemy lines and did the mundane chores of laundry, cooking, chopping wood, and so forth. Some went into battle with their masters but did not, of course, bear arms. And so, some were captured along with their masters. There was some discussion in the Union army about what to do with them. Most were set free after taking an oath of allegiance to the U.S. government. And then there were the two or three at Johnson’s Island. Why did they stay?

After I discovered this, I found that a man named David Bush had been leading an excavation at the island. He’d written a book and formed, or at least assisted in the formation, of a nonprofit called the Friends of Johnson’s Island. I emailed him back in June of 2021 after I visited the island.

Here is a portion of my email to David Bush:

He graciously emailed me right back.

So it happened and the rest is left to my imagination, based on what we do know, of course. Unfortunately Dr. Bush passed away about six months later. His work and passion for the history of Johnson’s Island is still being carried on by the Friends of Johnson’s Island. When I found out they were hosting a “pop up museum” at the island on the last Saturday of June, I made plans to go. Yes, my first visit was three years earlier, and no, that novel isn’t finished. Life got in the way, and I’m currently working on edits for a different novel, but the opportunity was there and I will get back to this work-in-progress soon.

This event featured the display of some artifacts, a few talks, and a self guided tour of the prison site, a place I didn’t know you could visit on my first trip there. Here are some pictures. (We also did a self guided tour of Sandusky sites on the Underground Railroad. I’ve include a few pictures from that, but I took a lot more!)

If you’re curious like me, you’ll want to see where Johnson’s Island is. This is northern Ohio bordering Lake Erie.

There is a lot of fascinating history on this prison. Things like Mr. Johnson, who rented his island to the government, was the first suttler, or seller of general goods, to the prisoners who had money or the Union troops. He was fired for price gouging. He had used the island for farming and no one was living there when the government built the prison. The cemetery is maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy. There were many escape attempts, a few successful. Winter was the best time to escape in one respect because the lake froze over and you could walk to Sandusky. On the other hand, winter was brutal. The quarters were built from green wood, which meant it shrunk, leaving gaps, which were nice and airy in the summer, but awful in the winter. The reason we have so much information on the prison life is because it was a prison for officers who were well-educated and often wrote home and kept diaries.

I hope you enjoyed my little blog tour of Johnson’s Island!