John W. Jones, hero of Woodlawn National Cemetery

At the beginning of the year, I posted about John W. Jones, Elmira's equivalent of Harriet Tubman. You can read that post here. In addition to this escaped slave's heroic involvement in the Underground Railroad, he was also the sextant of three cemeteries in Elmira, First Baptist, Second Street CEmetery, and most famously Woodlawn National Cemetery. What makes him the hero of Woodlawn is his meticulous and caring interment of 3000 Confederate prisoners who died in Elmira's death camp.

From July 1864 through the end of the war in 1865, Elmira was the site of the infamous Camp Rathbun, more commonly known as "Helmira"--a prisoner of war camp for Confederates where 24% died of preventable disease, starvation, and exposure. Elmira is said to be Washington's retaliation for Andersonville, that terrible camp in Georgia where thousands of Union prisoners died of starvation during the Civil War. What makes Elmira so despised in the South is that whereas the Confederate government was all but bankrupt by the end of the war, the North had no excuse for the conditions inside its death camp, including a festering pond, rampant malaria, cholera, smallpox, pneumonia, and dysentery, plus inadequate food, clothing, and blankets, and half the population relegated to tents in a bitter New York winter. Elmira was a desolate place of suffering where locals could pay a nickel to look inside the stockade walls at their former countrymen and gloat. 

In the midst of this suffering and horror, one man's goodness stands out. 

John W. Jones used a portion of his own property to arrange burial for these southerners--men who had formerly held him and his people in bondage to slavery. Jones kept meticulous records of names, ranks, regiments, and dates of death with a unique number assigned to each grave. He not only placed a hand painted wood marker at each individual grave, (later replaced with marble headstones) but also kept the information with each body via a paper inside a corked bottle. The War Department commended his efforts with a payment of $2.50 per grave. In those days, that was considered a boon sum. In fact, for a man of color to own his own farm, work for the local church as caretaker, plus manage the care for three cemeteries, in those days was astounding. His industriousness and high quality of work earned him respect among Elmira's citizens in his day and with contemporary scholars and historians who seek to honor his memory.

Perhaps the most remarkable story about Jones' role in burying the Confederate prisoners involves one inmate in particular. John R. Rollins was a name Jones encountered as he supervised the burial of the Southern detainees from Camp Rathbun. This Rollins was reportedly from Virginia. Jones recalled a John Rollins from his past as a slave--the son of his former overseer on a plantation in Leesburg. When entrusted with Rollins' remains, Jones went out of his way to contact the family to verify that it was in fact the same man. Rollins had been listed as Missing in Action, and the family was relieved to have closure. Jones later had the body sent home to be buried in the Rollins family plot. 

The grounds at Woodlawn are meticulously kept to this day, and I had the honor to tour their peaceful, verdant acres yesterday on Memorial Day. 

Every year on Memorial Day, each of the graves is decorated with an American flag, and each of the thousands of flags is then removed by sunset. The Daughters of the Confederacy has a memorial at the southwest corner, festooned with red carnations. I noticed at least one licence plate from Maryland in the circular drive of the National Cemetery yesterday, perhaps one of the descendants of a prisoner buried here.

Jones' modest home was saved from demolition in 1997 and has been relocated across from the cemetery, facing Davis Street in Elmira. The property, part of Jones' original farm, is being restored for the future John W. Jones Museum. http://www.johnwjonesmuseum.org/  Efforts are underway to make this historic landmark an interactive learning experience and tourist destination.

John W. Jones, Elmira's Conductor in the Underground Railroad

You've heard of Harriet Tubman, no doubt, the woman affectionately called "Moses" for her role in conducting hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad? You might have even heard that New York State Senator William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, personally financed her missions, and provided her a house and property in his hometown of Auburn, NY. But I'll bet you have never heard of  a man equally as brave and efficient at vouchsafing hundreds of his fellow escaped slaves to freedom who lived in Elmira NY during the mid-nineteenth century and through the American Civil War. His name is John W. Jones, and his story is remarkable and inspiring. This is the first part of a series on John W. Jones and Elmira's junction on the Underground Railroad

John W. Jones was born into slavery on a plantation in Loudoun County Virginia on June 21, 1817. When he was 27 years old, he and two of his half-brothers along with several other slaves from nearby farms, escaped and made a month-long journey from Virginia through Pennsylvania's rugged mountain passes on foot until they reached Elmira. Finding assistance along the way by stops on the underground Railroad in Philadelphia,Williamsport, Alba, and South Creek, they covered 300 miles.

Once in Elmira in 1844, Jones proved industrious and found the favor of several prominent families who gave him work and a chance at education. Within three years of arriving, he served as sexton of the First Baptist Church, which rebuilt a year later a more spacious building. He kept this position until yet a larger church was built in 1890, the present structure which stands on the corner of Church Street and Main Street, when he finally retired to his farm property about a mile north of the church.

First Baptist Church

During his over 40 years as sexton, he lived in a yellow house next to First Baptist, in close proximity with the railroad and Erie Depot. From 1850 on until emancipation, it is believed that he arranged safe passage for at least 800 runaway slaves--men, women and children--on Elmira's northbound trains to Canada. The Williamsport and Elmira line, later called the Northern Central, ferried anywhere from 6-12 people at a time on the 4 AM "Freedom Baggage Car" to the New York Central in Canandaigua, and eventually all the way to Ontario. It is likely he housed these journeying stowaways in his home in between arrival and departure, and his wife Rachel almost certainly fed many mouths in these ten years.

Frederick Douglass

Elmira had many Abolitionist-minded citizens who offered aid, among them Jervis Langdon, famed father-in-law to Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain). It is notable that Langdon housed and aided Frederick Douglass in his escape from Maryland in the Autumn of 1838 in his house in Millport, NY, a mere ten miles from Elmira.

Elmira College

Simeon Benjamin, founder of Elmira Female College, was another prominent financial contributor to the work.

Reverend Thomas K. Beecher, the pastor of the Independent Congregational Church that would come to be known as Park Church,  also contributed to the cause. He was brother to famous authoress Harriet Beecher Stowe and orator Henry Ward Beecher.

Beecher's Park Church was founded by a desire among its members to further the work of Abolition. The Christian revivals of the 1830s had sparked a religious sentiment into a flame of ardor through Central New York, called the "Burned-Over District", and many Elmirans had been caught up in the blaze of this revival, smoldering within them a desire for social change.

John Selover was an Elmira man with ties to Colonizationalist and Emancipationist Gerrit Smith, who aided John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

The Underground Railroad and Abolitionist history in Elmira is extensive, and ultimately leads to Emancipation and the Civil War. In the next part of the series on John W. Jones, we will look at his redemptive role in Elmira's infamous history during the period when Elmira housed a death camp for Confederates.