Gypsy Heart
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A Civil War site discovered?
Historians say burial ground found in city
By FRED BROWN, [email protected]
January 17, 2007
Members of the University of Tennessee's Archaeological Research Laboratory are using ground-penetrating radar to determine if Confederate soldiers from the Civil War-era Camp Van Dorn rest on property that now belongs to the city of Knoxville.
Amateur historians believe they have found the long-sought burial site near the city's Malcolm Martin Park at Western Avenue. They are using a ground-mapping process with a geophysics survey system that records abnormalities below ground.
Nicholas Herrmann, a research assistant professor in the anthropology program at UT and with the lab, is leading the early survey. He said his team is looking for "shafts or pits" that might have been used in burying Confederate soldiers from Camp Van Dorn, a training camp set up in Knoxville in 1862.
Camp Van Dorn was named by Gen. E. Kirby Smith in March 1862 to honor his friend and West Point classmate Confederate Gen. Earl Van Dorn. At the time, Knoxville was in the hands of the Confederacy, and Smith was in charge of what was called the Department of East Tennessee.
Many of the soldiers arriving in Knoxville were from Camp McDonald at Big Shanty near Atlanta. For the most part, they were raw recruits, some coming in without weapons. In Knoxville, presumably, they were to be put through boot camp, issued weapons and sent to Cumberland Gap.
Charlie Monday, a Maryville amateur historian, has been investigating the camp and the story, which has intrigued local historians for decades. From letters and diaries, he believes many of the soldiers died of diseases such as measles and amoebic dysentery and were buried in what is now Mechanicsville.
He said private funding is paying for the GPS mapping.
Monday became interested in the story after Gary Goodson, a Shawnee, Colo., historian, arrived in Knoxville last year to announce that he had found Camp Van Dorn. Goodson had been searching for the camp for about two decades.
Goodson said more than 150 soldiers from Georgia Confederate units died at the camp. He is a descendant of one of the Georgia soldiers who survived the camp diseases.
Monday also found local diaries that talked of the camp, and with one such diary he believes he has located the burial ground for the soldiers.
That is the place Herrmann and his helpers were looking recently, using the radar.
"Charlie believes there might be graves from Camp Van Dorn," said Herrmann. "We are using ground-penetrating radar to see if the data will show sub-surface features."
Those "anomalies," he said, could be in the form of disturbed dirt or burial shafts.
Herrmann said his team was collecting data "in 3-D slices and we will turn that into a 2-D image."
He said results from preliminary mapping could perhaps be done by the end of the week. If the data show the anomalies, then the team would return and conduct test probes.
Future probes will depend, he said, on funding and what is found.
A historical marker for Camp Van Dorn is to be placed at the park. The marker has been ordered, according to the Tennessee Historical Commission. Goodson is the paying sponsor for the marker, the commission said.
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_5284096,00.html
Historians say burial ground found in city
By FRED BROWN, [email protected]
January 17, 2007
Members of the University of Tennessee's Archaeological Research Laboratory are using ground-penetrating radar to determine if Confederate soldiers from the Civil War-era Camp Van Dorn rest on property that now belongs to the city of Knoxville.
Amateur historians believe they have found the long-sought burial site near the city's Malcolm Martin Park at Western Avenue. They are using a ground-mapping process with a geophysics survey system that records abnormalities below ground.
Nicholas Herrmann, a research assistant professor in the anthropology program at UT and with the lab, is leading the early survey. He said his team is looking for "shafts or pits" that might have been used in burying Confederate soldiers from Camp Van Dorn, a training camp set up in Knoxville in 1862.
Camp Van Dorn was named by Gen. E. Kirby Smith in March 1862 to honor his friend and West Point classmate Confederate Gen. Earl Van Dorn. At the time, Knoxville was in the hands of the Confederacy, and Smith was in charge of what was called the Department of East Tennessee.
Many of the soldiers arriving in Knoxville were from Camp McDonald at Big Shanty near Atlanta. For the most part, they were raw recruits, some coming in without weapons. In Knoxville, presumably, they were to be put through boot camp, issued weapons and sent to Cumberland Gap.
Charlie Monday, a Maryville amateur historian, has been investigating the camp and the story, which has intrigued local historians for decades. From letters and diaries, he believes many of the soldiers died of diseases such as measles and amoebic dysentery and were buried in what is now Mechanicsville.
He said private funding is paying for the GPS mapping.
Monday became interested in the story after Gary Goodson, a Shawnee, Colo., historian, arrived in Knoxville last year to announce that he had found Camp Van Dorn. Goodson had been searching for the camp for about two decades.
Goodson said more than 150 soldiers from Georgia Confederate units died at the camp. He is a descendant of one of the Georgia soldiers who survived the camp diseases.
Monday also found local diaries that talked of the camp, and with one such diary he believes he has located the burial ground for the soldiers.
That is the place Herrmann and his helpers were looking recently, using the radar.
"Charlie believes there might be graves from Camp Van Dorn," said Herrmann. "We are using ground-penetrating radar to see if the data will show sub-surface features."
Those "anomalies," he said, could be in the form of disturbed dirt or burial shafts.
Herrmann said his team was collecting data "in 3-D slices and we will turn that into a 2-D image."
He said results from preliminary mapping could perhaps be done by the end of the week. If the data show the anomalies, then the team would return and conduct test probes.
Future probes will depend, he said, on funding and what is found.
A historical marker for Camp Van Dorn is to be placed at the park. The marker has been ordered, according to the Tennessee Historical Commission. Goodson is the paying sponsor for the marker, the commission said.
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_5284096,00.html
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