The Libby Prison Timbers Came From Pennsylvania

 

In January of 1908, the Danville Morning News reported that the Libby Prison Timbers Floated Down Susquehanna Past Here Fifty Years.

"Timbers from which the famous infamous Libby prison was erected were floated down the Susquehanna past this town over fifty years ago.  The trees were felled at Wyoming county and rafted down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake Bay and thence taken to Richmond VA, where Libby erected a large tobacco warehouse, and when the Civil war broke out, that warehouse became Libby Prison.  The fact is not generally known, but is vouched for by Dr. John Denison, of Tunkhannock, who was told the full facts by an old Susquehanna river raftsman." - The Danville Morning News

The outside of the prison was constructed of brick, but photos of the inside show the huge timbers used in the construction.

Built in the late 1840s by John Enders, who was killed during its construction, the structure actually consisted of three separate pieces built to form one warehouse. In 1861, the warehouse was purchased by Maine native and Church Hill resident Luther Libby, who used it to house his ship chandler and grocery shop. A year later, the Confederate government seized the building to use as a prison for captured Union soldiers, calling it Libby Prison. 

The prison primarily housed Union Army officers, becoming notorious for its overcrowded and execrable conditions—second only to Andersonville Prison in Georgia. By 1863 Libby Prison was packed with some 1,000 prisoners, and many Union men would perish there from disease and malnutrition. Following the Union occupation of Richmond in 1865, the prison was used to detain Confederate officers. 

While visiting Richmond in April of 1865, Abraham Lincoln pronounced—to throng of people gathered near the prison who were clamoring to tear it down—that the building should be left standing as a monument.

Two decades later, in 1888, a group of Chicago investors purchased the building, had it taken apart piece by piece (asll 600,000 bricks) and moved to Chicago, where it was opened to the publis as a Civil War Museum.

The museum was quite popular, and profitable, through the Columbian Exposition in 1893, but the building was dismantled again in 1899, and sold as souvenirs and salvage.

My ggg grandfather, Joseph A Lumbard, 14th Co. G,  (later a Selinsgrove newspaper editor) mentioned seeing Libby prison:

"A number of the boys crossed the river and visited a number of the places of note in the late Rcbel Capital.  Among the places visited was Castle Thunder and Libby Prison, names which will never fail to send a shudder. through the breasts of every loyal person in the land, since within their walls were confined many of the bravest of the brave, and upon whom were heaped many insults and barbarities which alone will forever damn the memory of the actors in this inhuman drama.

At one of the prison pens in a yard an aperture was be seen which was the mouth of a burrow which had been dug by prisoners confined in the prison, and through which a number of prisoners had escaped a few nights before the surrender of General Lee’s Army.  As our boys stood and examin­ed the narrow opening they could not refrain from expressing their surprise that a man should attempt to squeeze his body through so small an opening." - The Diary of J.A. Lumbard, Co G 147th, Ch99

The Libby Prison Escape

The escape from Libby prison was the largest prison escape during the civil war.

For 12 nights straight, Rose & Hamilton tunneled through a sealed off room by chiseling through a fireplace and digging a route through the wall. They hid the dirt they removed under a thick layer of straw strewn around the basement, which was known as "rat hell", as it was always full of rats.


Early each morning the men slipped back through the fireplace, replaced the bricks and laid back down with the other sleeping men.
The two men soon enlisted the help of a dozen other prisoners, with men working in shifts. They worked in complete darkness, with rats swarming them the entire time they dug.
The first three tunnels failed. But seventeen days after starting the fourth tunnel, Rose broke through the flood of the a shed outside the prison fence. From there, the prisoners could simply walk through a gate to dock street.


On February 9th 1864, Rose, Hamilton, and 107 Union Officers slipped through the fireplace, one at a time. They each walked through the gate, and slipped into the shadows of dock street.
The fireplace bricks were replaced by men who had chosen not to escape at the time. Two men drowned after escaping, and nearly half of the men were recaptured, including Col. Rose. But many made it to the Union lines at Williamsburg, and it was one of the most successful prison escaped in American History, the largest to occur during the civil war.

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Tough Timbers Of Libby Prison Are Still Being Used

Tough timbers went into old Libby Prison, itself no chamber of ease, according to stories of Union Civil War prisoners.

Today, more than 40 years after the demolition of the one-time ship chandlery at Richmond, Va., execrated thruout the North during the Civil War as a chamber of horrors, its timbers are still on active duty.

Carved with the initials of many a Northern war prisoners of the Confederacy, they form the beams and rafters of a peaceful Indiana barn.

On the farm of Frank Davis, near Hamlet, Ind., visitors yet go to view the stout lumber on which their ancestors may have whittled during their durance.

Few barns have so many beams and rafters as Davis'. When the then State Senator J. G. Danielson acquired the lumber from the famous prison after the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, he found he had more than he needed for his barn. But he ordered all the timbers used – and the beams are almost close enough together to constitute a floor.

Their last trip to this farming community resulted from the failure of the project of a group of "mauve decade" promoters. They purchased the prison at the time of the 1893 fair and rebuilt it at a reported cost of $10,000, at Sixth Street and Wabash Avenue, Chicago, as a fair exhibit.

Though it attracted widespread publicity, the project was a failure as a money maker and was auctioned.

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An Index Of Stories, Photos & History From the Lumbering Area

Particularly Along The West Branch Of The Susquehanna River