Captain William Bion Mason's Letter:

Excert from The Mason Genealogy, by Mary E. Mason, 1911 (pg. 237)
 Letter & map from Cap. Mason to Mrs. Mason,
Shiloh, Sunday evening, April 27, 1862. -----

"I presume Mrs. Porterfield and Both [should be spelled Booth] and friends are nearly crazy with their loss. I truly sympathize with them and hope no more of my boys will have to be sacrificed upon the alter of liberty. But God himself only knows what is in store for us.

Some of my boys are very sick. I have two quite sick. Corporals Dougherty and Clindinst; each with camp fever. I hope they will get along. My boys had rather die fighting the enemy than to died with disease**

**We are expecting another bout with the enemy again soon, but I do not think it probable that we in our broken condition will be in advance. There are now many Regiments in our advance. The pickets are having frequent bouts with the enemy's pickets.*****


N. B. -- We were ordered to go out Sunday morning and from upon the dotted line touching the old field. We formed and marched down the Corinth road to the bridge. Co. B. was then ordered out as skirmishers and I deployed as far as double dotted line. Before getting my men fairly deployed the enemy were in rouse we were ordered to fall back this side of creek points G. B. and O. (G. B., George Booth was killed) from this position we, Co. B. engaged them and the Reg. marked 77th O. fell back and formed at that point and soon engaged them.

Co. B. fought every inch of the ground, from new line to gully, without any running, let people say what they will, and too under a galling fire of shot, shell, grape and musketry before getting up to the gully. Many of my boys were wounded on this very ground. Wendlan and Davis, I think of now.

A battery of 4 guns answered the enemy's fire and we were ordered to form in head of gully and sustain the battery which we did. Our 40 rounds were expended and we got more and we have not run yet. The enemy crossed the creek three times and was repulsed each time. The flag bearer was killed at F.

They then broke and their left wing filed up the new road, giving us a fire which compelled us to retire to a line represented thus '''''. their regt. wing filed up the ravine and flanked our left, compelled us again to retire it being now past eleven oclock; having engaged the enemy from 6 A. M. and at the time our relative position to the enemy was this: [diagram of map shows the REBELS on the east, west, & south. The 77th OVI in the middle facing south - sketch of the map not shown here.] The small line the fragment of the 77th Reg.

Again we fell back some distance and supported Batterys the balance of the day. Thus ended our Sunday fight. When receiving the order N. B. the enemy was already formed as shown nearly a mile this side with Battery within 300 yards of our tents.

I was on picket the night before and some of Sunday. 2. P. M. saw heavy force of cavalry scouring the woods from our right to left. My boys were fired on about 12 Saturday noon. We at 2 A. M. Saturday morning plainly heard the enemy beating their drums on the road to Corinth all of which was duly reported and no notice taken of it, it being considered an absurdity that we would be attacked by the rebels, but you may be assured that the men of my company had but little sleep that night.

Nevertheless as a body the Union troops were surprised. We fought well, but as of yet, have not received the credit due us. Some body has murder on their hands. But the outright cold blooded thing is to come yet within the facts and plans of Tuesdays fight is made out." [End of letter in book]


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Excerpt from the Alton Prison Website: ....

"The 77th Ohio was not held in high esteem by the majority of Altonians, and the men had a bad time during their stay in town.

The commander was Col. Jesse Hildebrand, a brave disciplinarian and soldier who commanded a brigade at Shiloh, but the regiment that came to Alton with him behaved badly in that battle and was routed, driven back to the river.

The men were sent to Alton to do lighter duty and to recover the regiment's morale. This was accomplished and later the regiment gave distinguished service on the battlefield, but the most trying portion of its history during the war probably was the stay in Alton, when the outfit was the object of torment by every schoolboy in the city. When a group of schoolboys would meet one of the regiment's soldiers on that street, they would shout "There goes a Shiloh racer."

The result was that the soldier would dash for his tormentors, the air becoming blue with adjectives of a gingery nature, but this would only delight the boys and they would continue the bickering from a safe distance.

Fire broke out in a wooden building in the northwest corner of the prison grounds in November of that year; and the flames were finally subdued by the Alton volunteer fire department, but during the excitement, several prisoners escaped. This was blamed onto the 77th by the boys, though a much more serious escape had taken place during the guardianship of the beloved 13th, and no capital had been made of it"

ROCK PILE SIGNIFICANT PIECE OF ALTON HISTORY
- Alton Telegraph, October 29, 1973

"The Col. Jesse Hildebrand of the 77th Ohio was the prison commander. Described in historical records as well respected, he was also noted for his hatred for Southerners. He would often cancel all rations, such as they were, for days because of minor flare-ups among the prisoners. In one instance, when the Union flag fell off the flag pole into the prison yard, two dozen prisoners ran out stomping on the flag while singing "Dixie." This episode resulted in the shooting on the spot of one prisoner, and a full week without food for all inmates. During this time 12 more prisoners died.

But the real tragedy came to the prison in 1863 when smallpox broke out among the prisoners. The medical treatment provided by Buckmaster consisted of a local doctor visiting the prison hospital, five beds in all, every Saturday. The smallpox spread quickly in the filth infested prison. When the yard was not turned into a swamp by rain, it was a desert of dust with a current oasis consisting of puddles of urine and other human wastes. The prisoners were in no physical condition to withstand the ravages of smallpox and it soon turned into a full-scale epidemic.

A panic spread through the city of Alton when it was learned what was happening in the prison. With the death toll increasing to five per day and rising, burial became a problem also. The first victims of the epidemic were buried in what is now the Confederate Cemetery, located near North Alton. But when North Alton residents learned of what was going on, they protested and the prison officials had to find another place to put the dead.

The problem was solved when officials started using an island located just 200 yards upstream from the prison on the Mississippi. Mass graves were dug on the island, in the form of trenches four feet deep and 50 feet long. Bodies were wrapped in a blanket and thrown into these mass unmarked graves.

The death toll required a trench to be dug once a week to accommodate the bodies during the height of the epidemic, which lasted from the winter to the spring of 1863-64. No accurate records were kept during the epidemic, but estimates of deaths due to the epidemic range from 1,000 to over 5,000. The Army listed the toll at 1,354, but then, their records were not accurate either.

During the epidemic, a hospital was also set up on the island of the gravesites, known by this time as Smallpox Island. Only a few of the several thousand smallpox victims ever returned from the island. The epidemic subsided in the late summer of 1864, almost a year after it had started, and about a year after that the old prison once again became inactive.

[After the war] Buckmaster still owned the prison, but after a couple of attempts to get it reopened, he sold it in 1875. The prison walls began to come down as the smooth limestone blocks were in great demand by area builders, who used the stones in foundations of many local buildings. Many of the stones went into the construction of the East Alton railroad underpass.

By the year 1894, when the city of Alton purchased the wall, all that was left of the prison is what stands there now, only a small reminder of the first Illinois state prison - a prison that had no bathing facilities, the only prison where the inmates had to stand to eat their meals, and a prison that rivaled Andersonville for filth, misery and death...."

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