I examined Captain Emelious W. FULLER's Compiled Military Service Records back in January 2009 in order to update his entry in the Fort Delaware Society database. Captain Fuller was released from the St. James USA General Hospital at New Orleans on 19 MAY 1863 and was one of 50 Confederate officers transferred to Fort Monroe on 2 JUN 1863. He was involved in the Maple Leaf Affair and apparently chose to honor his parole and remain on board when other Confederate officers seized the ship and escaped. Captain FULLER was still recovering from a "right arm fracture", a result of the gun shot wound he suffered during his capture on 14 APR 1863, and could hardly be expected to swim. He may have been suffering from intestinal troubles as well.

Captain FULLER arrived at Fort Delaware on 13 JUN 1863 and remained just over a month before being transferred on 18 JUL 1863 to the officers prison at Johnson's Island, Ohio. Captain E. W. FULLER arrived at Johnson's Island on 20 JUL 1865 and died there five days later on 25 JUL 1863 from "gastritis". Remarks on one of the Johnson's Island record cards state that he was "buried on the Island" in "Block 5".

The 1912 War Department "Register of Confederate Soldiers Who Died in Federal Prisons and Hospitals in the North" lists "E. W. FULLER, Captain of Gunboat 'Queen of the West'" as having died on 25 JUL 1863 and been buried on Johnson's Island. A special note to his entry in this "Register" states: "Reported as having died on Johnson's Island, but the grave was not located. A number of graves in the Confederate Cemetery are marked 'Unknown' and it is thought that they are the graves of these particular dead, as the number not identified is practically the same as the number of graves marked unknown." An information board posted at the cemetery site when I visited in 1995 stated that there 206 bodies interred at the prison site of whom 52 were unknown.

I will be very much interested in knowing the name and author of the biography of Captain FULLER that Steve knows about.

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society
www.fortdelaware.org
E-mail: society@fortdelaware.org