Henry T. Braddock served in the American Civil War and was taken prisoner at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on 20 May 1864. According to his compiled military service record, he was transferred to several different locations before being exchanged in February 1865. One of those locations was the prison camp in Elmira, New York where he spent his last year as a prisoner of war. The death rate at this prison camp was 25% and it was only used for one year! In May 1864 the U.S. War Department learned that there were vacant barracks in Elmira, NY that had been used as a rendezvous point earlier in the war. Men were sent to encircle the camp with a stockade fence and make it into Elmira Prison. By July about 700 confederate prisoners were being transferred there from Point Lookout, MD, and other overcrowded federal prisons, and before the end of August, they numbered almost 10,000 enlisted men. Living conditions were bad from the start, with insufficient shelter-the barracks held only half the prisoners; the others were crowded into tents, even in winter-and with a serious sanitary situation presented by a stagnant pond stretching the length of the enclosure, into which sinks drained. The 40-acre camp was below the level of the Chemung River, which bordered it, making drainage difficult.The prisoners' diet lacked vegetables, and by August there were 793 cases of scurvy. Dr. Eugene F. Sanger, camp surgeon and commandant, feuded constantly about unfilled needs and 1 Nov. 1864 wrote U.S. Army Surgeon General Joseph Kl Barnes: "Since August there have been 2,011 patients admitted to the hospital and 775 deaths. . . . Have averaged daily 451 in hospital and 601 in quarters, and aggregate of 1,052 per day sick. At this rate the entire command will be admitted to hospital in less than a year and thirty-six percent die." Of the 12,122 soldiers imprisoned at Elmira, 2,963 died of sickness, exposure and associated causes. The camp was officially closed on July 5, 1865. All that remains today of Elmira Prison is a well-kept Cemetery along the banks of the Chemung River. Henry survived the horrific conditions as a prisoner of war at the Elmira Prison and lived another 34 years. He died at the age of 59 in 1899.

William Braddock