Descendant of Civil War prisoner shares artifacts
By Rachel Haynie

Dr. Edmund Taylor has treasured artifacts his ancestor Lt. John Taylor brought home from Johnson Island, an Ohio Civil War Prison. At the Ninth Annual Civil War Symposium September 22, 23, 2006, he will show them to a Johnson Island scholar in town to address this year's Civil War Symposium at the SC Department of Archives and History.

Dr. Edmund Taylor has a number of ancestors with Civil War military service, but one is of special interest to a noted scholar. Dr. Dave Bush will be in town to give the keynote address at the Ninth Annual Civil War Symposium to be held September 22, 23. The Ohio professor has requested to meet Taylor. He hopes the retired physician will bring his family artifacts.

The Ohio archaeologist, author of Doing Time , knew of the Taylor connection in Columbia when he agreed to speak at the symposium. He spoke of young Lt. John Taylor with great familiarity.

John Taylor, one of several patriots serving from the same family, was captured in South Carolina and transferred from one Union prison to another before enduring the last two years of his incarceration at Johnson Island. Bush hopes Taylor has some details he can add to his body of knowledge about the Union prison camp that held thousands of Confederate officers.

Taylor said, "He was captured when the orders he was following, to relieve a sentinel, sent him in the wrong direction, right into Union hands." Taylor spoke of his ancestor as though he knew him well. Keen research into his family's history has kept Lt. John Taylor alive in the consciousness of the contemporary Taylor all these years.

"All he had was one blanket, and they were on the edge of Lake Erie. Snow and wind would come smack through the walls," recounted Taylor who knows his forebear's letters by heart. "He nearly froze to death, and on top of that, they kept them on the barest possible calories to keep them alive and just well enough that they wouldn't have to give them medical attention."

Taylor said more soldiers died of medical conditions than were killed, but the treatment of the officers held at Johnson Island was not ordered by Union command. "It was the men at the prison who took things before they ever reached the prisoners. John Taylor's family sent him clothing, food, supplies, even money, but they never got to him."

The unauthorized blockade worked the other way, too. "Although he wrote to his mother every day, she received his letters only sporadically," said Taylor, who was born after his grandfather died but remembers his grandmother.

After the war, Taylor's grandmother collected as many letters that had transferred between her and her son as she could. "A cousin, Francis Taylor Meissner, and her husband Charles have now published a family book of our ancestor's letters," said Taylor.

He will show Bush his ancestor's picture, the shadow box filled with Taylor's war relics, and two books, one by the Meissners. The other he wrote himself. The retired physician's family history has one chapter devoted entirely to John Taylor's time at Johnson Island.

Learning that Lt. John Taylor's progeny was interested in an information swap encouraged Bush to invite others descended from Johnson Island prisoners to seek him out during the two-day symposium.

Bush is the banquet speaker for Saturday evening at the symposium. For more information, go to www.state.sc.us/scdah/2006civilwar.htm.