A Confederate is Returned to Florida
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Confederate POW's remains

heading home to Florida

by Tom Farmer

Thursday, September 26, 2002

    The last Confederate prisoner of war believed buried in New England will be laid to rest

in his family's cemetery plot in Florida next month, nearly 139 years to the day he died in

captivity at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Confederate Navy Lt. Edward J.K. Johnston

currently lies beneath a massive granite stone at the former Fort Devens in Ayer. 

    The Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services, with funding from Confederate

Navy re-enactor George Hagen Jr. of Georgia, and support from the Sons of Confederate

Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is supervising Johnston's

exhumation and return to Fernadina, Fla., where he will be buried with his wife, Virginia,

and two of their five children.

    ``Tom said, `Let's try to get this boy home,' '' said Bob Hall, special assistant to

Department of Veterans Services Commissioner Thomas G. Kelley.

    Johnston, a Scotsman born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1827, became a POW on June 17,

1863, when his ironclad blockade runner, the CSS Atlanta, was captured off Savannah,

Ga., by the USS Weehawken and USS Nahant. Johnston and some of his shipmates

were imprisoned at Fort Warren on George's Island, where Johnston died of pneumonia

Oct. 13, 1863.

    Confederate prisoners and Union guards paid $75 for the 6-by-3-foot granite stone

that lies over Johnston's body. The stone, which will also go to Florida, was moved

with Johnston's remains from burial spots on George's Island, Deer Island and

Governor's Island before Johnston was interred at Fort Devens in 1939.

    Hall said he approached Kelley about Johnston after Joe Geden, a fellow member of

the Olde Colony Civil War Roundtable, discovered Johnston was likely the last POW

buried in New England when he was doing research on the Confederate Navy.

    On the Internet, Hall found Johnston's great-great-grandson, Ben Korbly, 57, who once

lived in Medfield and now resides in Philadelphia. Korbly, who visited Johnston's grave at

Fort Devens with his now-deceased mother 10 years ago, said most of the 200 living

descendants had wanted to see him returned to Florida and the family approved the move.

    ``It is a very gracious and honoring thing they are doing for him,'' said Korbly. ``There

are a whole bunch of people who are making this happen. My mother always wanted him

(buried) down South and this will be his final move.''

    Johnston will be exhumed and ``pardoned from the soil of Massachusetts'' prior to a

formal military ceremony at Fort Devens on Oct. 12. His hearse will be escorted by state

troopers through each state from Massachusetts to Florida, where the body will be placed

on a replica Confederate sailing ship for the final leg of the trip to Fernadina. Johnston

will be laid to rest there Oct. 26.


© 2002 Boston Herald

 

 

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