Sergeant HENRY F. POOLE, Co. D, 47th Illinois

Henry F. Poole was born on __________ __, 184__ (c. 1840/41) in Putnam County, Illinois the son of Guy W. Pool and Sophronia (Bascom) Pool. Guy was born on March 6, 1800 in Morgan County, Ohio, the son of Simeon Pool and __________ (__________) Pool. Guy W. Pool was reared to agricultural pursuits, and grew to manhood farming the land beside his father. His educational privileges were limited. Guy was a soldier in the Black Hawk War in 1832.
Guy was married to Saphronia (or Sophronia) Bascom on June 17, 1838 in Putnam County, Illinois. Saphronia was born on __________ __, 1818/19 at ___________, New York. Ten children, seven sons and three daughters, are known to have been born to Guy and Saphronia. They are;
1. Lucy Mariah Pool, born c. 1839/38 in Putnam County; married to John Black; Lucy is buried in the Wyoming Cemetery in Stark County, Illinois.

2. Henry Pool, born c. 1841/40 in Putnam County.

3. Aaron Pool, born April 4, 1842 in Putnam County; buried in Calvary Cemetery, Alliance, Box Butte County, Nebraska.

4. George Pool, born c. 1844/43 in Putnam County.

5. Isabelle Augusta Pool, born September 30, 1845 in Putnam County; married to Augustus J. DeLong on September 20, 1871 in Magnolia Township, Putnam County, Illinois; Isabelle died on November 11, 1893 in Gilman, Illinois; buried in the Gilman Cemetery, Gilman, Iroquois County, Illinois.

6. Franklin Pool, born 1847/46 in Putnam County.

7. Sidney Pool, born July 3, 1849 on the Hennepin Road, five miles north of Henry, Illinois in
Putnam County; moved to Cheyenne, Nebraska about June 1886; died in Julesburg, Nebraska on December 8, 1917; buried in the Dalton Cemetery, Julesburg.

8. Sarah G. Pool, born __________ __, 185__ in Putnam County; married to George W. Dennis on September 26, 1872 in Magnolia Township, Putnam County, Illinois.

9. Edward Pool, born __________ __, 185__ in ___________ County, Illinois.

10. Charles Dickens Pool, born __________ __, 185__ in __________ County, Illinois.

Guy and Saphronia are known to have resided a number of years on the Hennepin Road, five miles north of Henry, Illinois. Guy Pool died on October 21, 1857 in Putnam County. Guy's earthly remains were laid to rest in the __________ Cemetery in ____________ County, Illinois. Saphronia died on November 8, 1905, possibly in Wyoming, Illinois where she may have been residing with her eldest daughter, Lucy, and her earthly remains were laid to rest in the Wyoming Cemetery in Wyoming, Illinois on her oldest daughter's plot. Perhaps Guy's earthly remains rest there as well although his more likely lie somewhere in Putnam County.

In the 1850 census dated November 18, 1850, Henry is listed as 9 years old. In the 1860 census, taken in June of 1860, Henry is listed as being 19.

ILLINOIS STATE ARCHIVES
Illinois Civil War Detail Report

Name POOL, HENRY F Rank CPL
Company D Unit 47 IL US INF

Personal Characteristics
Residence HENRY CITY, MARSHALL CO, IL
Age 21 Height 5' 7
Hair DARK Eyes HAZEL
Complexion DARK Marital Status SINGLE
Occupation FARMER
Nativity PUTNAM CO, IL

Service Record
Joined When AUG 16, 1861
Joined Where PEORIA, IL
Joined By Whom CPT TOWNSEND
Period 3 YRS
Muster In AUG 16, 1861
Muster In Where PEORIA, IL
Muster In By Whom
Muster Out Muster Out
Where Muster Out By Whom
Remarks PRISONER SINCE DEC 2, 1863

Wikipedia tells is that "The 47th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The 47th Illinois Infantry was organized at Peoria, Illinois and mustered into Federal service on August 16, 1861. The unit was transferred to St. Louis, Missouri, on September 23, 1861, and remained on barracks duty until December of that year.
The 47th Illinois Volunteers lost 30 killed and 100 wounded in the Battle of Corinth, Mississippi, in October 1862. The unit also suffered heavy casualties in a May 22, 1863, charge during the initial phase of the Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Henry F. Poole was apparently captured on or about December 2, 1863 and sent to a unknown southern prison camp. In February of 1864, what the Confederates called, Camp Sumter, opened. This was a new Confederate prison camp built near Andersonville, Georgia to hold approximately 10,000 to 12,000 Union Prisoners of War. At somepoint, probably soon after it was opened, Henry F. Poole was sent to the infamous "Andersonville Prison."
Wikipedia tells us , "The Andersonville National Historic Site, located near Andersonville, Georgia, preserves the former Andersonville Prison (also known as Camp Sumter), a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the final fourteen months of the American Civil War. Most of the site lies in southwestern Macon County, adjacent to the east side of the town of Andersonville. As well as the former prison, the site contains the Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum. The prison was made in February 1864 and served to April 1865. The site was commanded by Captain Henry Wirz, who was tried and executed after the war for war crimes. It was overcrowded to four times its capacity, with an inadequate water supply, inadequate food rations, and unsanitary conditions. Of the approximately 45,000 Union prisoners held at Camp Sumter during the war, nearly 13,000 died. The chief causes of death were scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery."
Wikipedia continued, "The prison, which opened in February 1864,[5] originally covered about 16.5 acres (6.7 ha) of land enclosed by a 15-foot (4.6 m) high stockade. In June 1864, it was enlarged to 26.5 acres (10.7 ha). The stockade was rectangular, of dimensions 1,620 feet (490 m) by 779 feet (237 m). There were two entrances on the west side of the stockade, known as "north entrance" and "south entrance". Robert H. Kellogg, sergeant major in the 16th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, described his entry as a prisoner into the prison camp, May 2, 1864: As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that he alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then."
Wikipedia continues, "Further descriptions of the camp can be found in the diary of Ransom Chadwick, a member of the 85th New York Infantry Regiment. Chadwick and his regimental mates were taken to the Andersonville Prison, arriving on April 30, 1864. An extensive and detailed diary was kept by John L. Ransom of his time as a prisoner at Andersonville. Father Peter Whelan arrived on 16 June 1864 to muster the resources of the Catholic church and help provide relief to the prisoners. At Andersonville, a light fence known as "the dead line" was erected approximately 19 feet (5.8 m) inside the stockade wall. It demarcated a no-man's land that kept prisoners away from the stockade wall, which was made of rough-hewn logs about 16 feet (4.9 m) high and stakes driven into the ground. Anyone crossing or even touching this "dead line" was shot without warning by sentries in the pigeon roosts."
Wikipedia continued, "At this stage of the war, Andersonville Prison was frequently undersupplied with food. By 1864, not only civilians living within the Confederacy but also the soldiers of the Confederate Army itself were struggling to obtain sufficient quantities of food. The shortage of fare was suffered by prisoners and Confederate personnel alike within the fort, but the prisoners received less than the guards, who unlike their captives did not become severely emaciated or suffer from scurvy (a consequence of vitamin C deficiency due to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet). The latter was likely a major cause of the camp's high mortality rate, as well as dysentery and typhoid fever, which were the result of filthy living conditions and poor sanitation; the only source of drinking water originated from a creek which also served as the camp's latrine, which was filled at all times with fecal matter from thousands of sick and dying men. Even when sufficient quantities of supplies were available, they were of poor quality and inadequately prepared. There were no new outfits given to prisoners, whose own clothing was often falling to pieces. In some cases, garments were taken from the dead. John McElroy, a prisoner at Andersonville, recalled "Before one was fairly cold his clothes would be appropriated and divided, and I have seen many sharp fights between contesting claimants.""
Wikipedia continued, "Although the prison was surrounded by forest, very little wood was allowed to the prisoners for warmth or cooking. This, along with the lack of utensils, made it almost impossible for the prisoners to cook the meager food rations they received, which consisted of poorly milled cornflour. During the summer of 1864, Union prisoners suffered greatly from hunger, exposure and disease. Within seven months, about a third had died from dysentery and scurvy; they were buried in mass graves, the standard practice for Confederate prison authorities at Andersonville. In 1864, the Confederate Surgeon General asked Joseph Jones, an expert on infectious disease, to investigate the high mortality rate at the camp. He concluded that it was due to "scorbutic dysentery" (bloody diarrhea caused by vitamin C deficiency). In 2010, the historian Drisdelle said that hookworm disease, a condition not recognized or known during the Civil War, was the major cause of much of the fatalities amongst the prisoners. At the time of the Civil War, the concept of a prisoner of war camp was still new. It was as late as 1863 when President Lincoln demanded a code of conduct be instituted to guarantee prisoners of war the entitlement to food and medical treatment and to protect them from enslavement, torture, and murder. Andersonville did not provide its occupants with these guarantees; therefore, the prisoners at Andersonville, without any sort of law enforcement or protections, functioned more closely to a primitive society than a civil one. As such, survival often depended on the strength of a prisoner's social network within the prison. A prisoner with friends inside Andersonville was more likely to survive than a lonesome prisoner. Social networks provided prisoners with food, clothes, shelter, moral support, trading opportunities, and protection against other prisoners. One study found that a prisoner having a strong social network within Andersonville "had a statistically significant positive effect on survival probabilities, and that the closer the ties between friends as measured by such identifiers as ethnicity, kinship, and the same hometown, the bigger the effect."
Wikipedia continued, "The conditions were so poor that in July 1864, Captain Wirz paroled five Union soldiers to deliver a petition signed by the majority of Andersonville's prisoners asking that the Union reinstate prisoner exchanges in order to relieve the overcrowding and allow prisoners to leave these terrible conditions. That request was denied. The Union soldiers, who had sworn to do so, returned to report this to their comrades. In the latter part of the summer of 1864, the Confederacy offered to conditionally release prisoners if the Union would send ships to retrieve them (Andersonville is inland, with access possible only via rail and road). In the autumn of 1864, after the capture of Atlanta, all the prisoners who were well enough to be moved were sent to Millen, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina. At Millen, better arrangements prevailed. After General William Tecumseh Sherman began his march to the sea, the prisoners were returned to Andersonville. During the war, 45,000 prisoners were received at Andersonville prison; of these nearly 13,000 died. The nature and causes of the deaths are a continuing source of controversy among historians. Some contend that the deaths resulted from deliberate Confederate war crimes against Union prisoners, while others state that they resulted from disease promoted by severe overcrowding; the food shortage in the Confederate States; the prison officials' incompetence; and the breakdown of the prisoner exchange system, caused by the Confederacy's refusal to include blacks in the exchanges, thus overfilling the stockade. During the war, disease was the primary cause of death in both armies, suggesting that infectious disease was a chronic problem, due to poor sanitation in regular as well as prison camps."
On July 31, 1864, the population of the prison was recorded as 31, 678. Sergeant Henry F. Poole died on July 29, 1864 in the infamous Andersonville Prison in Andersonville, Georgia. The internet site, "Civil War Prisons", tells us;
Name: POOLE, HENRY F.
Alternate spelling of last name: GOOLES
Year born: 1840
Rank: SERGEANT
Company: D
Arm: Infantry
Regiment number: 47th Illinois Infantry
Date captured: 12/2/1863
Location captured: Philadelphia, Tennessee
Date of death: 7/29/1864
Cause of death: SCORBUTUS

Sergeant Henry F. Poole's mortal remains were laid in what is today identified as grave #4203 in the Andersonville National Cemetery.

by Baxter B. Fite III and John Melton.