Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Seventy years after his discharge from the Alton military prison where he spent eight months as a prisoner of the Union forces just before the close of the Civil War, S.A. Harrison, 93-year-old Confederate Veteran from Dent County, Missouri, Sunday revisited for the first time the scene of his wartime captivity.

"I didn't find much of the old place left", the elderly veteran told a Telegraph reporter today. "Everything is changed - but I rather expected it would be."

Harrison's visit to the old prison site came in course of a visit at the home of his granddaughter, Mrs. C.A. Coppedge in East Alton, where he has two great-grandchildren. With his daughter, Mrs. R.S. Null, and his grandson, S.C. Null and family of Rolla, Mo., he came by automobile, and made a pleasant call this afternoon at the office of the Telegraph just before the party started back to Rolla.

Despite his age, Mr. Harrison enjoys vigorous health and a keen recollection of his days in the prison here. He reads without glasses and his hearing is excellent. When a reporter expressed amazement at his evident vigor at age 93, the old veteran replied with just a degree of honest pride: "Why I did a bit of plaughing last summer, sowed some wheat, and some corn." And just a little later on in the conversation he let it be known that he can still draw a steady bead on a squirrel and enjoyed a bit of hunting last fall

"There were said to be 6000 prisoners here when I was sent to Alton October of 1864," Harrison related in a short recital of his prison experience. "I had been cut off near Rolla and had surrendered. Of course the prison was terribly crowded. Bunks had been built up in tiers seven, maybe nine tiers high in the prison buildings. Three or more men slept in each tier, and I can remember that the first night I climbed up to the seventh tier to sleep."

"Smallpox was still prevalent, and that first night I slept between two men, one of whom broke out with smallpox the next day but somehow I did not catch it. At one time I worked in the prison hospital as a nurse. Sisters of Charity were helping to care for the sick, but the death rate under the crowded conditions was high. One night I remember helping to carry out 20 who had succumbed."

"Because of the epidemic conditions, the moving of many coffins gave a chance at times for escapes. There was one occasion I know of when I helped carry out some prisoners who had concealed themselves in coffins, but they failed of success. They beat off the lids and jumped from the cart on which the coffins were being transported to the graveyard, but the guards caught them and brought them back."

Harrison also recalled that the assassination of President Lincoln occurred during his prison stay. "I don't remember just how the news got ...the prison," he said, "but I do remember that cannon...boomed from the bluff top to the west most of t...day."

As to the treatment of the prisoners, Harrison declared that it was probably as good as could be expected. "The guards were kind, and treated me well," he said, "but the main trouble was the food, we just didn't get enough. The crowding too, was a hardship. I got a bit of exercise now and then by being sent out to work digging away material from under the bluffs. But there wasn't much freedom in this for the prisoners let outside the walls wore a ball and chain lest they make a break for freedom."

"Of Alton itself in prison days, I remember little. I got no chance to see the town, other than the levee. When I was released on June 5, 1865, I was given transportation to Rolla, then the terminus of the Frisco road. From that point I had to walk 45 miles to get back home and you can guess I was pretty weak when I tell you the walk took four days.

"I got home to find all the family possessions swept away and that I was penniless."

Born April 10, 1841, in Texas County, Missouri, Harrison, on August 6, 1862, when 21, enlisted in the Eighth Missouri Volunteers. On his return home he married the girl to whom he had been engaged when he enlisted. He resumed farming with fair success and gradually recovered from the losses the war had cost him.

On leaving the Telegraph Office, he expressed pleasure at his long deferred visit to the prison site, and hopes he may come again at an early date.

[Photo caption: "Samuel Harrison returned to Alton in 1935 and visited the Alton prison site. He selected a stone from the prison to use as his grave marker."]

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