The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 367
673 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Camp Groce, Texas: A Confederate Prison
Plantation in Waller County, for $2,000 in 1849. Fresh Confederate
recruits cleared the wooded land, leaving one side open, and erected a
single row of barracks, two hundred feet long, that would later house
Union prisoners. The Confederates later constructed an almost identical
set of barracks, parallel to the first but closer to the railroad tracks, to
house the guards. Smaller buildings served as Confederate officers'
quarters. Only a few hundred yards north of the Houston and Texas
Central Railroad and bordered by a creek to the north, the location at
first seemed ideal. The creek, however, was later described by Charles
Bosson of the Forty-second Massachusetts Volunteers as a "sluggish body
of swamp water surrounded by cypress trees." Lt. Col. A. J. H. Duganne
of the 176th New York Infantry Regiment described it as a "sluggish
brook." The use of an almost stagnant body of water as the camp's pri-
mary water source made this an obviously unhealthy locale.5
The first Union soldiers arrived at this site in two waves on June 13
and 30, 1863. The second group's arrival initiated a reunion of sorts,
because the two groups of men had been held together previously in
Houston. After the Confederate victory at the Battle of Galveston on
New Year's Day 1863, Confederate authorities detained the captured
Union officers as prisoners. Enlisted men received their paroles and
marched to Union lines to await formal exchange. The other group, an
additional lo09 men and officers captured from the United States ships
Morning Light and Velocity on January 21 at Sabine Pass, Texas, joined the
Battle of Galveston officers in Houston on January 25. Their time
together in that city proved brief.6
The enlisted men in Houston became the first Union inhabitants of
Camp Groce on June 13, 1863, when they arrived at Hempstead by train.
Although members of this group of prisoners had become quite friendly
with their guards, having enjoyed a night in a Houston bar with their
"captors," friendly relations did not inspire the transfer to Camp Groce.
Instead new guards, under Capt. Claudius I. Buster of the Twentieth
Texas Infantry, replaced the prisoners' preferred guards. In the wake of
the successes at Galveston and Sabine Pass, Confederate officials likely
Eusiba Lutz, "Liendo: The Biography of a House," Southwest Revzew, 16 (Jan., 1931), 190, 197.
The plantation changed owners several times after the Civil War. Elisabet Ney, the renowned
sculptor, was among the owners in the 1870s. Charles P. Bosson, History of the Forty-second Regiment
Infantry, Massachusetts Volunteers, 1862, 1863, 1864 (Boston: Mills, Knight and Co. Printers, 1886),
423; A. J. H. Duganne, Camps and Prsons: Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf (New York: J.
P Robens, 1865), 254; Joseph Palmer Blessington, The Campazgns of Walker's Texas Divzszon, intro-
duction by Norman D. Brown and T. Michael Parrish (1875; reprint, Austin: State House Press,
1994), o2; Lisarelli, Last Prison, 15. A geological survey of the Liendo Plantation area is on file at
the Harold B. Simpson History Center at Hill College, Hillsboro, Texas.
6 Bosson, History of the Forty-second Massachusetts, 415. The actions at Sabine Pass referred to
here should not be confused with the Battle of Sabine Pass in September 1863.367
2001
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001, periodical, 2001; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101221/m1/435/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.