"Pa. field holds secrets of 1780s British POW camp"

[TheCommandTent]

Interesting story here.

YORK, Pa. (AP) — The mud of a south-central Pennsylvania cornfield may soon produce answers about the fate of British prisoners of war — and the newly independent Americans who guarded them — during the waning years of the American Revolution.

A few miles east of York, the city that briefly served as the fledgling nation's capital after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia, more than a thousand English, Scottish and Canadian soldiers were imprisoned at what was then known as Camp Security.

The fight to preserve the plot where those soldiers and their captors worked and lived has lasted almost twice as long as the Revolutionary War itself. And the end is in sight — if its backers can raise the last few hundred thousand dollars needed to pay for it.

"This is an extraordinarily important site, because so few of these camp sites survived," said Steve Warfel, a retired curator of archaeology at the Pennsylvania State Museum who is involved in the project. "It's a very important piece for understanding the revolutionary period, and how people were treated when they were incarcerated."

A 1979 archaeological study found numerous artifacts that confirmed local lore about the prison camp's location. Two years ago, the local government, Springettsbury Township, took possession of an adjacent, 115-acre property and last year The Conservation Fund paid a developer nearly $1 million for the 47-acre parcel. Now the Friends of Camp Security faces an August deadline to pay off the fund so it can turn the smaller plot over to the township as well.

Nothing about the property today suggests it was once teeming with prisoners. The first group arrived in 1781, four years after their 1777 surrender at Saratoga, N.Y. More arrived the next year after the battle in Yorktown, Va. By April 1782, there were 1,265 men at the camp, along with 182 women and 189 children — family members and others who accompanied the prisoners.

The first group was kept under less strict conditions and could be hired out to nearby farms, where among other things they were put to use chopping firewood and hunting wolves. The Yorktown veterans were much more strictly confined, kept inside a circular stockade that had been constructed from 15-foot-high log posts.

http://news.yahoo.com/pa-field-holds-secrets-1780s-british-pow-camp-152915701.html

More at the link.

[Longdan]

As Spock would say...Fascinating.

[Martok]

Cool story TCT; appreciate the link.  I'd never really heard anything about this aspect of the American Revolution before. 

[Longdan]

My favourite POW stories are about the POW/MIA's from the War of 1812.
Seems a lot of the Canadians and not a few of the Americans just did not want to go home.
It was too far to walk and they had family in the neighbourhood anyway.
The professional soldiers of the day frequently did not care who they worked for.
Not so much officers but the enlisted men.

[Centurion40]

There is an 1812 American POW cemetery in my city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadman's_Island_(Nova_Scotia)

[LongBlade]

v cool. thanks!