AYER, Mass., Oct. 12 (UPI) -- A Confederate Navy officer who died a prisoner of war in the North 139 years ago embarked Saturday on his final voyage home to the South.
Lt. Edward J.K. Johnston, who died on Oct. 13, 1863, at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, is believed to be the last Confederate Navy prisoner of war still buried in New England.
Several hundred people including dozens of descendants and re-enactors in full Civil War military dress, both Union and Confederate, turned out in drizzling weather Saturday for disinterment ceremonies at Fort Devens, Mass.
"By coming here this morning we are not only honoring Lt. Johnston but all Americans of all wars," Bob Hall, a Massachusetts veteran and honorary captain in the Confederate Navy, told the gathering.
Hall, a member of the Olde Colony Civil War Round Table, helped organize the "bring him home" effort.
"I am so delighted to be able to do this," said an emotional Dana Chapman, a Confederate nurse re-enactor from Georgia who helped coordinate the event.
"I'm thrilled by the efforts of all the people involved," said Ben Korbly, 57, of Philadelphia, one of several of Johnston's great-great-grandchildren who attended the disinterment services. "Everybody wants to go home."
A small coffin containing Johnston's remains was placed in a white funeral van for the two-day drive from Massachusetts to Florida. A plaque on the sides of the van reads "Final Journey Home. Lt. Edward John Kent Johnston."
The cortege was to be accompanied by state troopers from each state it passes through.
Johnston's remains are to be reburied with his wife, Virginia, and some of their children in a family plot on Oct. 26 at Fernandina Beach on Florida's Atlantic coast.
Some 1,500 people -- including 25 to 50 of Johnston's 200 living descendants -- are expected at the Florida ceremonies, according to Chapman, a founding member of the Georgia Civil War Commission.
Born in 1827 in Dublin, Ireland, to Scottish parents, Johnston sailed to Florida with his parents when he was 3. At 14 he came back to the sea, becoming an engineer. After returning to Ireland for several years, he sailed back to Florida and in 1853 met and married his wife. According to some records, they had five children, many of whom are buried with their spouses in the Fernandina family plot.
When the American Civil War broke out between the Northern and Southern states in 1861, Johnston, being a sailor, joined the Confederate Navy and was made a lieutenant.
He was aboard the ironclad blockade-runner CSS Atlanta when it was captured by the USS Weehawken off Savannah, Ga., on June 17, 1863.
Johnston and other ship's officers were imprisoned at Fort Warren on George's Island in Boston Harbor.
On Oct. 13, 1863, he died at the fort, most likely due to a combination of pneumonia, dysentery and diarrhea. He was about 39.
Union guards and other prisoners collected $75 to buy a 1,500-pound granite stone marker for his grave.
When the fort closed, Johnston's body was reburied first on nearby Governor's Island and then Deer Island, and it and the stone marker were moved in 1939 to their current site at the Fort Devens Army cemetery in Ayer.
"The stone has followed him at all four graves to this point," Hall said. Despite being "very old, cracked," the granite slab was making the final journey to Florida with Johnston.
Although Johnston's family knew he had died in Massachusetts, members were never able to afford the expense of bringing him back to Florida.
But thanks to the efforts of veterans groups both North and South, a new effort was launched this year and finally made possible when a member of the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans, George Hagan Jr., said he would pick up the bill.
After arrival in Fernandina Beach, the body will be held at the Oxley-Heard Funeral Home until the morning of Oct. 26, when the casket will be placed aboard the CSS Belle, a replica of a Confederate Navy vessel.
The Belle will sail about 5 miles up the Amelia River to a docking point near the Bosque Bella Cemetery on Amelia Island. Johnston, at long last, will finally be home with his family.
(For more information, see Web sites civilwarnews.com/news; occwrt.org; hometown.aol.com/gordonkwok/occwrt; scv.org)
