The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 17
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Camp Groce: Confederate Military Prison
ticingly good-natured" that the prisoners soon thought him "as
good a man as a rebel could be.""
Until the fall of 1863, all prisoners, whether officers or men,
were housed together, an arrangement which caused consider-
able discomfort to the officers. During September, four of the
highest rank, Colonel Isaac S. Burrell, 42nd Massachusetts,
Colonel Charles C. Nott, 176th New York, Captain John Dilling-
ham, senior naval officer present, and Assistant Surgeon J. W.
Sherfy, were permitted to occupy half of a "little shanty of rough
boards" separate from the barracks. The privilege was greatly
appreciated.'
Other privileges included bathing in the nearby stream, visit-
ing the surrounding neighborhood on parole, and purchasing
extra provisions. The prisoners divided into "messes" to eat, and
if a mess possessed the means, as many did, to buy food beyond
the ration, meals of a respectable character were prepared. Coffee,
tea, molasses, and vinegar could be obtained from Houston, while
closer at hand were poultry, eggs, butter, milk, and sweet potatoes.
During 1863, most prisoners did supplement their rations by pur-
chases, as one Federal officer was relieved to find upon his arrival
that he would not have to live as he thought Texans did upon beef
and corn meal.'"
The amount of Confederate paper money available to Federal
prisoners at Groce, at least to the officers in 1863, appears to have
been remarkable. Admitting some exaggeration, a Federal naval
captain claimed "there was plenty of money in Texas," that "it
was the easiest thing to get," and "anybody would lend you all
you wanted-the only fault he had to find was, that after he got
it he couldn't spend it." Colonel Nott claimed that at times a
secret Unionist and again a Confederate officer "fairly forced
his money upon us. They took no obligation, save the implied one
SNott, Sketches in Prison Camps, 115-116.
'lbid., 105.
olbid., 98-99; Duganne, Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf, 256.
Nott had "expected to broil beef on sticks, and bake dodger in a dodger pot."
Concerning the purchase of coffee, Nott claimed that what was available was
"poor stuff," and not worth its price of fifteen Confederate dollars per pound. At
that time in the fall of 1863, the Confederates apparently were issuing corn meal
as a substitute for the coffee ration. The making of "corn coffee" included the
singeing of the meal in a frying pan. Nott, Sketches in Prison Camps, 119.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/35/?q=%221777%22: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.