Bartlett Yancey Malone

[L Verge]

I will have to get Sgt. Malone's diary just to read about Point Lookout. My great-grandmother's brother was in the Confederate Navy and was sent to Point Lookout after his capture. He survived, but carried an open wound on his ankle that never healed. Assigned to grave-digging detail, he struck his leg with a pick-ax. The germs were so horrendous that the wound remained with him until his death years after the war.

As a side note, his brother fought for the Union (they were both from Maryland) and survived also. They would attend family functions, but would never speak to each other from 1865 on.

The site of what was once Point Lookout Prison Camp is about an hour's drive from Surratt House. Today, most of the original prison compound is underwater and archaeological exploration is conducted at times. The Point is the southernmost tip of Maryland where the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River come together. I have been told that the currents there are extremely treacherous. There is a huge monument as you enter the modern grounds, and then you get a surprise by seeing nothing but camp grounds and fishermen -- 99% of whom probably have no idea of the history there. Even the State Park rangers assigned there know very little to nothing about the Civil War history. I understand that what was once a small museum to that history is now devoted to natural resources exhibits.

Perhaps that is fitting, because the original plans for Point Lookout in the 1850s was as a resort area to attract the wealthy people from D.C. and Baltimore. The horrific prisoner counts from Antietam and Gettysburg changed those plans.