Dixie Crow Annual Memorial Day Andersonville Cemetery Outing

Approximately 30 Dixie Crows made the trip to Andersonville National Cemetery on Friday, 28 May to participate in the annual Flag Ceremony honoring our fallen heroes for this 2010 Memorial Day.

Upon completion of Flag distribution the Crow delegation headed to the camp ground where our beloved "Chef Roadkill," aka Mark Leslein, had prepared us a fabulous spaghetti supper. We somehow managed to finish dinner prior to Mother Nature treating us to fabulous rain! Clean up and reloading of the bus went very quick! 

Did you know that if you Googled National Cemeteries on the internet neither Andersonville nor Arlington Cemetery would show up? A National Cemetery is a cemetery that is managed by the Veterans Administration. Arlington Cemetery is cared for by the US Army and Andersonville is cared for by the National Park Service. Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many Confederate military prisons established during the Civil War. It was built early in 1864 after confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, VA to a place of greater security and more abundant food supply.  During the 14 months the prison existed, more that 45,000 union soldiers were confined there. Some 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding or exposure.

A few other unique facts regarding Andersonville:

• The cemetery was created as a result of the prison. It was not planned/gridded like most National Cemeteries.
• Only 32 bodies were moved from the cemetery after the war.
• There is only 1 confederate soldier buried at Andersonville.  His body was re-interred there in 1998.
• Out of the 12,920 POW's that died in Prison, only 460 graves were marked as unknown.