I have something that I hope you can help me with. In Clay Town Onondaga County New York where I was born and raised there was this old swamp that had been fenced off for ever. When I was twelve years old the mother of my
best friend told me why it was fenced off. At one time that area had been a
back wash from the excess water used in the raising and lowering of the locks on the old barge canal that was near by. Back in 1864 a prison ship
that was nothing but a leaky old tub was towed on to this small lake. It was filled with five hundred confederate prisoners of war. All of them were
sick,Wounded,and in the process of dying. In 1865 a horrendous thunder storm came through with high winds, sheets of rain, and thunder and lighting. About midnight the guards got a little scared so they batten down
the hatches and left the POW's on there own. This leaky old tub with five
hundred men aboard went down with all hands minus the guards.When I got home later that day I asked my father about it he took me on out there and
for the first time I stood on the edge of that swamp. Out in the middle of that swamp you could see a small pieace of the ship sticking up out of the
water. Around the edge of the swamp were these little graves about twelve of them. To this very day they claim it never happened. In 1959 they drained that old swamp draged off what was left of the old ship and bulldozed the entire area so that you wouldn't even know anything had been there. In my senior year in highschool my New York State history teacher
told me that she felt that it came from Elmira Prison Camp because every so
often they would do this to help cut down on the horrid sounds of the dead
and the dying. Do you have any record of prisoners being shipped to Clay Town, New York from Elmira??