Civil War comes alive
By Rachel Haynie

Dr. Dave Bush (l), Francis Taylor Meissner and her husband Charles, and Dr. Edmund Taylor.

Dr. Dave Bush , a keynote speaker at the recent Civil War Symposium, greeted Dr. Edmund Taylor, and Taylor's cousin Francis Taylor Meissner and her husband Charles, as though he had known them for years. In a way he had. Bush has been researching the history and archaeology of Johnson's Island, a Union prison camp near Sandusky, Ohio, on Lake Erie for nearly two decades.

Taylor's great-grandfather was among the thousands of Confederate officers held prisoner on the island. In recent years Francis Taylor Meissner compiled and edited all the letters their forbear Lt. John Taylor exchanged.

Meissner, a Columbia native, was able to contact families of all but one of the prisoners mentioned in her soft-bound book, which now is nearly out of print. Sale of her book has helped generate funds for the continuation of archaeological and historical research on the island.

The Civil War Symposium was a partnership among the SC Department of Archives and History, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room, the SC Archives and History Foundation and Historic Columbia Foundation. Bush, professor at Heidelberg College and director of the Center for Historic and Military Archaeology, is active in the preservation of Johnson Island Prison Site.