Author: Miss Cellania / Source: Neatorama
In 1844, John W. Jones escaped a plantation in Virginia and walked to New York, dodging slave catchers, with four other men. He settled in Elmira, traded work for an education, and became a sexton caring for his church’s cemetery. Jones worked with the Underground Railroad, helping around 800 enslaved people escape to Canada.
During the waning days of the Civil War, Elmira sprouted a prison camp for captured Confederate soldiers.Elmira was never supposed to have a prison camp; it was a training depot for Union soldiers. But when the Confederacy began refusing to exchange African-American soldiers—who it considered captive slaves, not prisoners of war—the Union stopped participating in prisoner exchanges….
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