A northwest Ohio island in Ottawa County served the Union Army as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War, holding primarily Confederate officers, according to a WTVG feature.
Amanda Manahan, board co-chair of the Friends and Descendants of Johnson's Island Civil War Prison, told the station that about 10,000 men were imprisoned there between April 1862 and September 1865. She said it was the only Union Army prison originally constructed for that purpose.
The small cemetery along Lake Erie holds hundreds of Confederate dead. Tom Vickers of the Johnson's Island Preservation Society said there are 206 markers, though as many as 230 people may be buried there. He said the original wooden crosses deteriorated, and a Georgia businessman later financed marble markers shipped by train and boat.
Vickers described the prison as functioning like a small city, with schools, tradespeople, a distillery, a library and a YMCA. Manahan said the island's bay setting made escape difficult, and the site was chosen for its distance from Confederate states.
Historians say Leonard B. Johnson bought the island in 1852, renamed it from Bull's Island, and leased 40 cleared acres to the U.S. Army in fall 1861 for a POW depot. The cemetery is now cared for by the Department of Veterans Affairs.