Contributed by: Jim Forcum WILLIAM WRIGHT FORCUM, Pvt., C.S.A., Co H, 4th Regiment of North Carolina Troops. Enlisted Jun 13, l861, Iredell Co, NC. Wounded in Battle of Chancellorsville, VA May 3, l863. Recorded as killed at Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, VA in the Bloody Angle on May 12, l864. But he wasn't killed, and was a Prisoner of War at Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois (aka “80 Acres of Hell”). During the war, over 18,000 prisoners were held at Camp Douglas. In January and February 1863 an average of 18 prisoners died every day, for a death rate of 10% a month, more than any other Civil War prison in any 1-month period. The Federal Sanitary Commission pointed out that at this rate, all the prisoners would be dead in 320 days. Thereafter he shows up again as Wright W. Forcum in Co. B, Mallett's Battalion (Camp Guard), at Camp Holmes near Raleigh, N.C.. Immediately after the war he moved to Montezuma, IA, where he raised a large family and died in 1902. |