George Washington Frosst in Salisbury PrisonD

George Washington Frosst (1827-1904) was a Yankee patriot to the core. His grandfather fought alongside his namesake, Gen. George Washington, in the Revolution. His father was a Maine textile mechanic at the Portsmouth Manufacturing Company on the Quamphegan Falls in South Berwick. Although sickly as a boy, George survived the tuberculosis and smallpox epidemics that swept through the mills, wiping out most of the men in his family.

Despite the tragedy, George too became a machinist. After accidentally losing an eye in a nearby Rollinsford factory, he moved on to the massive mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. There George Washington Frosst befriended John Hancock, another mill worker. Seeking opportunity and a healthier climate, the two men moved to Virginia with Hancock’s brother Thomas, to found their own machine shop. Getting back home to Maine became the adventure of a lifetime.

Trapped in the South

In 1857 George Frosst married a southerner, Emma Elizabeth Sumpter of Richmomd, Virginia. Three years later, history swallowed them up. Abraham Lincoln was elected president and, upon his inauguration, Southern states began to secede from the Union, sparking the Civil War. In February 1862, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated at Richmond for a six year term as president of the Confederate States of America.

Within a month George Frosst was named as a potential Yankee spy and hauled before Richmond’s provost marshal. George would pledge his loyalty to the Confederacy, the marshal said, or "he would put me where the dogs would never think of looking for me." According to his own account, written decades later, George refused to take the oath. The marshal ("the old red-headed skunk") told George he "deserved to be shot" and threw him into prison with his partners John and Thomas Hancock and other "red hot Union men".

CONTINUE FROSST EXCAPE

Life in Salisbury prison

Two months later George and the other Richmond detainees were shipped away from their hometown and families to a North Carolina penal colony. The infamous Salisbury Prison, hastily converted from a brick cotton factory, was designed to hold about 2,500 prisoners of war. As the war dragged on, over 10,000 men were crammed into increasingly horrific conditions. The mortality rate rose from 2% to 28%. At least 5,000 (some say 10,000) unknown Union soldiers are buried there today in a series of trenches.

George Frosst was lucky. He got in and out of Salisbury before its deadly decline. In May 1862 he joined about 1,400 prisoners there. Lodgings were damp and crude, but livable. Initially there was food, fresh water, and even an attractive campus of old oak trees that Frosst writes were populated by flying squirrels. Prisoners could wander the grounds, talk together, even play baseball. Another detainee described Salisbury in its early days as "more endurable than any other part of Rebeldom."

A few prisoners attempted escape from Salisbury, but were caught and returned. George and one of the recaptured men kept a few squirrels as pets, then realized the irony of their actions. Perhaps, one of them suggested, that releasing the squirrels would shorten their own imprisonment. Frosst writes:

"We at once decided to liberate our pets, and away they went skipping from tree to tree, chirping thanks to us for their Liberty and Freedom to seek their old homes…"

Within a week of releasing the squirrels, George and the Hancock brothers were shipped from Salisbury, NC back to Richmond, VA by rail. The men had already served six months in prison, without being charged with any crime. Home again, they were temporarily thrown back into a cell with Confederate "deserters, toughs and cutthroats," and, for a moment, feared they might be shot. With difficulty, they made their case. Although he would not relinquish his loyalty to the North, George said, he had a southern-born wife and two children to support.

Finally cutting through the red tape, the men were paroled, but required to check in with the authorities three times weekly. Frosst eventually obtained written permission to return to South Berwick, but without his family. Keeping a low profile to avoid suspicion, he entrusted his share of the machine shop business to the Hancocks and made two risky trips North to prepare an escape route for his wife and children.

CONTINUE FROSST EXCAPE

Trial run

History is filled with tales of enslaved African-Americans fleeing southern bondage. George Washington Frosst’s life was never as harsh, nor his journey as dangerous, but it was not without risk. He was, after all, a suspected Union spy to the Confederates, and a Southern merchant to Unionists. He made five trips across the Mason-Dixon Line altogether – three north and two south – during the peak of the Civil War that eventually left over 600,000 dead. George recounted his story 37 years later in 1900, shortly before his death, yet his story is rich with detail.

After the bloody battle at Fredricksburg in 1863, George decided he had to get his family out of Richmond to the safety of his boyhood town of South Berwick. His first scouting expedition took just over a month travelling in winter on horseback, by carriage, oxcart, ferry and in rented boats. Avoiding military maneuvers when possible, he crossed the Rappahannock, Pocomoke, Potomac, and Chesapeake largely under cover of darkness, praying not to be mistaken for a blockade runner, smuggler or spy. Reaching South Berwick on his second try, George Frosst saw his mother and sister for the first time in 15 years, then headed right back to Virginia to collect his family.

Escape to Maine

Confident that the journey could be made safely, George and his wife Emma prepared. Soon after the devastating battle at Gettysburg, they discreetly settled their accounts and packed. They set off with a few hundred dollars in "greenbacks" and gold, and $2000 in confederate "scrip" that was trading at about six-to-one in Union dollars. At 4:30 on the morning of July 23, 1863, the Frosst family bid their neighbors farewell and set out in a two-horse carriage driven by a black man named Price. Scarcely 20 miles from Richmond one of the horses fell by a stream and soon died, stranding the carriage at night. A passing Samaritan rescued, fed, and housed the family, but their troubles had just begun.

Refreshing their team of horses, they quickly met up with a roving detective who noticed that Emma Frosst’s papers did not allow her to travel outside the local community. George tried bribing the "plug ugly" detective with booze. "It did not require a prophet to tell that he was fond of whiskey," Frosst later wrote, "and a large lot of it, at that." When the drunken detective passed out, the Frosst family disappeared, crossing rivers, staying with families and bribing strangers along the way. Stealing 10 miles along the river to Washington City with other passengers, their overloaded wooden boat nearly sank. But they bravely pressed on, George recorded, because they would "rather sleep on the bottom of the Potomac that night, than be back in Richmond under the reign of Jeff Davis and his minions." The party held their breath as they passed silently under the stern of an enemy gunboat without rousing the guards. After hiring another carriage at great expense and bribing another detective, their goal was in sight.

On reaching Leonardtown, MD on the first week of August, George Washington Frosst was overwhelmed. Stepping aboard the steamer that would take them to Washington, he spotted an American flag. Only then, he wrote 37 years later at age 73, did the enormity of his journey overtake his emotions. After three years living under "mob law", he was headed home and his family was safe. After waiting out the war in South Berwick, the Frosst family returned to Richmond. But George never forgot that first glimpse of the Star-Spangled Banner. Although his feelings were "beyond description," George described them all the same. He wrote:

"I can at this day feel the joyous thrill it gave me when I saw Old Glory floating above me. I felt like yelling with delight, and giving the stars and stripes one good rousing cheer, and throwing up my hat, I was almost crazy. It was, of course, only a flag, but it was my Country's Flag, I have never since seen anything so beautiful as it appeared to me that day. I felt like falling on my knees and thanking my God for deliverance."

SOURCE: To read excerpts from the journal of George Washington Frosst visit the Old Berwick Historical Society web site at www.obhs.net.

Copyright © 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. Robinson is the owner of the popular web site SeacoastNH.com. His latest book is Strawbery Banke: A Seacoast Museum 400 Years in the Making.