Our Memorial Day Trip to Andersonville, Georgia

We drove about 3 hours North of Tallahassee to Andersonville, Georgia, yesterday. Despite Andersonville's unpleasant historical significance, the little village is cute. There are several antique shops and a recreation of a pioneer village that has a working water-powered grist mill.



The national park, which includes the National Prisoner of War Museum, the Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp site, and a National Cemetery, is the reason most tourists visit Andersonville. The prisoner of war camp there, known as Camp Sumter, was notorious for terrible sanitation, lack of food, and over crowding. During the last part of the Civil War, 13,000 Union soldiers died there, more than at any other Civil War camp.

A photograph of a starving man from the prison camp:




Avery friendly park ranger patrols the cemetery, helping people who are looking for the graves of relatives. All of the known soldiers buried there are listed in a computer database, that he is able to access with a handheld devise.