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Camp Morton (Union POW Camp)

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  • Peter Edson Deal, (USA) (1827 - 1903)
    Peter Edson Dead Pioneer of West Oshtemo Died This Morning After a Lingering Illness Peter Edson Deal, born Dec. 6, 1837 In Geneseo, Livingston county, N. Y., died after a lingering illness of many mon...
  • Richard Dale Owen, (USA) (1810 - 1890)
    Dale Owen (January 6, 1810 – March 25, 1890) was an American geologist and soldier. An officer in the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War, Owen taught for fifteen years at Indiana Universit...
  • John Henry Curley, (USA) (1839 - 1864)
    John served in Company C, 9th Tennessee Cavalry. He enlisted at Liberty, Tennessee. He was captured at Sugar Creek, Tennessee, near Pulaski on October 9, 1863. He was sent to Camp Morton, where he died...

Camp Morton was a military training ground and a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Indianapolis, Indiana, during the American Civil War. It was named for Indiana governor Oliver Morton. Prior to the war, the site served as the fairgrounds for the Indiana State Fair. During the war, Camp Morton was initially used as a military training ground. The first Union troops arrived at the camp in April 1861. After the fall of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh, the site was converted into a prisoner-of-war camp. The first Confederate prisoners arrived at Camp Morton on February 22, 1862; its last prisoners were paroled on June 12, 1865. At the conclusion of the war, the property resumed its role as the fairgrounds for the Indiana State Fair. In 1891 the property was sold and developed into a residential neighborhood known as Morton Place, a part of the Herron-Morton Place Historic District.

Camp Morton was established on a 36-acre tract of land that bordered present-day Central Avenue and Nineteenth, Twenty-second, and Talbott Streets. It was among the largest of the Union's eight prison camps established for Confederate noncommissioned officers and privates. Between 1862 and 1865, the camp's average prison population was 3,214; it averaged fifty deaths per month. Its maximum prison population reached 4,999 in July 1864. More than 1,700 prisoners died at the camp during its four years of operation.

While the military facilities at Camp Morton no longer exist, the remains of 1,616 Confederate soldiers and sailors who died while prisoners at the camp are interred at Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery. Several monuments and historical markers commemorate Camp Morton, including a bust of Richard Owen, a camp commandant, at the Indiana Statehouse, and memorials to the Confederate prisoners who died at the camp at Indianapolis's Garfield Park and Crown Hill. The memorial at Garfield Park was dismantled on June 8, 2020.

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