By Jessie Burchette
jburchette@salisburypost.com
On a summer-like Saturday evening, visitors from across the country sprinkled soil on a small lot at 320 E. Bank St.
The soil was collected from states represented by soldiers and civilians who had ties to the Confederate Prison.
Sue J. Curtis, president of the Salisbury Confederate Prison Association, conducted the dedication service. The Association, chartered in 1999, has 215 members in 29 states.
The East Bank property was given to Dr. Ed McKenzie, who left it to the Association.
Curtis said the plan is to clear the back of the lot of bamboo and do a dig for historical relics, similar to a dig carried out in 2005 by Wake Forest University.
Specialized radar units were used to try to locate the prison walls in the 400 block of East Fisher Street. The archaeologist also looked at a site off the 200 block of South Shaver Street.
Part of the prison fence extended across Shaver Street to about the third lot on East Bank Street, according to the maps the Association has.
Eventual plans for the Bank Street lot include turning it into a memorial park to honor all those who served ó those who were prisoners and those who guarded them.
Historian Annette G. Ford displayed a map of the greater Salisbury Prison grounds, explaining where the Bank Street area was in relation to the major facilities at the prison.
The dedication came during the 12th Annual Salisbury Confederate Prison Symposium.
The Confederate Prison operated here from December 1861 to February 1865. Designed to hold 2,000 prisoners, the prison became overwhelmed by the fall of 1864 when its population swelled to some 800 prisoners per acre. Guards stopped going inside the prison walls, and prisoners often tried to dig escape tunnels because the prison had become such a deathtrap.
In the last months of the prison’s existence toward the end of the Civil War, its population grew to 10,000 Union soldiers and Confederate deserters or dissidents. Disease and starvation led to the deaths of 4,000 to 5,000 men.
The 12th Annual Symposium drew 75 people from across the country. They attended the lectures at Catawba College and the Friday night banquet at Landmark College.
The symposium will conclude with a memorial service at 10 a.m. today at the Old Lutheran Cemetery and another at 11 a.m. at the Salisbury National Cemetery.