Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Carpenter, Lafayette Robert 1925
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Marilyn Ransom mlnransom@chartermi.net June 15, 2011, 6:38 pm

The Ionia Sentinel-Standard, Monday, December 14, 1925

Lafayette Robert Carpenter, age 79, one of the few remaining members of the 
William H. Borden post, G.A.R., died at 12:25 a.m. Sunday at the Michigan 
Soldier’s home at Grand Rapids.

Mr. Carpenter enlisted in company 11, seventeenth Michigan Infantry, as a 
private June 14, 1862.  He was discharged from service June 10, 1865.

For many years Mr. Carpenter was employed by Judge Lovell following whose 
death Mr. Carpenter worked for the city.  

Mrs. Carpenter and his son Frank died a number of years ago.  He is survived 
by Mrs. Conrad Soderstron, formerly Mrs. Frank Carpenter, and three 
granddaughters, Ernestine, Lucille, and Arabelle Carpenter, who reside in 
Grand Rapids; a sister, Mrs. Charles Richmond, of Milwaukee, and three 
nepehws, J. R. Edward, and L.D. Carpenter, of Marshall.

The funeral service will be held from the Church of Christ Wednesday afternoon 
at 2 o’clock.  Rev. M. S. Decker will conduct the service.  Burial will take 
place in Highland Park cemetery.

Probably no veteran of the Civil war had a more colorful or tragic experience 
during those days of suffering than did Robert Carpenter.  Slight of build and 
not overly supplied with strength, he went through the shadow of death from 
shot and shell, from exposure, starvation, thirst, and the terrible neglect 
and cruelty of that hell-hole of rebel prisons, Andersonville.

He has often told the story of his suffering to his friends, and his comrades 
still living, many of them at least, are familiar with the tale.

“I was captured by the rebels May 12, 1864, at Spottsylvania Courthouse,” he 
said not long ago in one of his reminiscent moods.  “A regiment of heavy 
artillery broke and let the enemy flank us.  Seventy-one members of the 
Seventeenth Michigan infantry were captured by Longstreet’s corps.  They took 
1,300 of us to Andersonville during seven days of fighting.  They marched us 
40 miles to Gordonsville, and put us on the cars, and didn’t give us sleepers, 
either.  There were 125 of us in a little box car.  At Waynesboro, North 
Carolina, they unhitched the engine for wood and water.  It came back full 
speed, broke up the train and some cars, knocked the prisoners off, and killed 
two or three of them and two guards.  Many were injured.  One died of his 
injuries at Andersonville.

“We reached the prison at night in a pouring rain, and were held half way to 
camp until morning.  They took us in in the day time.

“I took off my boots the day they captured me, and went barefooted all the 
time I was there.  And the nights were cold.”

Mr. Carpenter always declared that his recollection of the appearance of the 
spring of water that suddenly burst from the ground in Andersonville prison 
would not let him…(portion illegible)….

“On the low land were the tents.  Maggots were a foot deep.  It was never 
cleaned, and the men walked through.  You would think it impossible for any 
human being to go through what we went through.  That is one reason why I 
don’t talk about it much.  I can’t tell it as bad as it was, so there is no 
use talking.

“From 125 to 200 a night died.  In a year 13,600 died.  Andersonville existed 
only about 13 months.  The dead were carried out the gate where they had 
stakes in the ground with brush over them.  We carried out our own dead.  The 
men would fight to see who would get on the detachment to carry out the bodies 
and get the extra stick of wood for doing it.  

“The rebels put the bodies under the brush dead house.  Then they brought a 
wagon and piled as many on as they could make stick there and carried them off 
to the ditch.  They kept a record and numbered every tombstone, but there were 
no bodies there.  They were piled in the ditches.  There were many attempts to 
escape.  Hamp Walker spent about half his time digging tunnels but never got 
out.

“When we were turned loose at Wilmington, just as we were turned over, they 
gave us a piece of meat and a pint of flour.  When we  started from 
Andersonville for Wilmington they gave us a dish of rice, about a pint that 
lasted us all night, all the next day, and the next night and half the second 
day.  When we reached Wilmington we were turned over to the Sixteenth 
Tennessee.  I was there two weeks in a big brick building.  I was so starved 
and had lost so much flesh I couldn’t stand up.  When we were ready to go I 
crawled on my knees and fell down two flights of stairs to the boat.  I had 
been told I could not go, you see.

“I went to Hampton Roads, was loaded at Annapolis, then taken to Columbus, and 
with others discharged at Camp Chase June 10, 1865.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/ionia/obits/c/carpente13278nob.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/mifiles/

File size: 5.2 Kb