The Foland Family of Scottsville: Part III
Peter V. Foland, Prisoner of War.
Need to catch up? Click here: The Foland Family of Scottsville: Part I
~
Thanks to James Morton Callahan’s biography of Clarke Valentine Foland in The History of West Virginia, Old and New, Volume 2, I have re-examined Peter V. Foland’s military service during the Civil War.
On October 19, 1861, Peter claimed he was seventeen years old when he enlisted for twelve months of service in Company G of the 43rd Tennessee Volunteers. These were Confederate troops. Click here to see the battles they fought in:
CONFEDERATE TENNESSEE TROOPS: 43rd Regiment, Tennessee Infantry (Gillespie’s) (5th East Tennessee Volunteers)
He was discharged on November 17, 1862.
On September 15, 1863, at Panther Springs, Tennessee, Peter reenlisted for a term of three years. This time he joined the 9th Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry, which apparently fought for the Union. Click here to see the battles they fought in:
UNION TENNESSEE VOLUNTEERS: 9th Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry
In October, he was charged with desertion. In 1885, this charge was removed from his record.
Then, on February 5, 1864, he was captured by the Union Army and was a prisoner of war held in several places, including Camp Chase in Columbus Ohio.
The obvious question is . . . As a member of the 9th Regiment, fighting for the Union, why was Foland held as a prisoner?
Was he imprisoned for desertion? Was he a Confederate spy? Can a Slate River Ramblings reader offer another explanation for his imprisonment?
Also, if Peter V. Foland did fight for the Union, was this fact known when he settled in Scottsville, Virginia, married a local girl, and became a town leader?
Coming next: The Foland Family of Scottsville: Part IV
slate river ramblings . . . . 
The source/title page for this information is “Louisville KY, Auxiliary Register No. 14. Political Prisoners; 1241 Names, not in alpha order. Then there is a list of what the column headings mean, etc, just clerical stuff.
The title page, all handwritten, concludes with “there is no evidence that any of these men served in the Confederate army”.
General Stephen Gano Burbridge, who signed off on the order to send Valentine Foland north of the Ohio was known as the Butcher of Kentucky.
The page is hard to read, but it looks like the disposition was “sent north of the Ohio River during the war” so this would have amounted to virtual exile. They probably were forbidden from going back home at penalty of death or (sometimes worse), return to POW camp.
There’s a strange record in Selected Records of the War Department Related to Confederate Prisoners of War, 1861-1865, on a roster with the heading “Roll of Political Prisoners”
where it notes that he (Valentine), Alfred Hinckley, and Henry Jenkins of Jefferson county TN were “sent from the Department of the Cumberland to be released north of the Ohio River” on 13 Jun 1864 by order of General Burbridge.
It doesn’t say what his offense was, but some other offenses on the page were “shouting for Jeff Davis” and ‘hunting for Jeff Davis & John Morgan’.
This might be one of those things that requires digging deeply into the records of the provost marshal.
I saved the image but don’t know how to post it here.