NATHAN WASHBURN 118th NY INFANTRY and 59th MA INFANTRY DIED IN DANVILLE, VA - When he was young, Dr. Lewis Washburn, from Vermont, ran away from home to become a drummer boy in the War of 1812. He married Harriet Longley in Shefford, Quebec, in August 1822, and their first son, Nathan Longley Washburn, was born there in February 1823. Nathan came to the United States and married Eliza Hatch in Wilmington in 1843. By the time he left to enlist in the 118th Infantry as a lieutenant in August 1862, he and Eliza had five children. When he was still in Washington with the regiment when he resigned in February 1863. In February 1864, Nathan enlisted in the newly-formed 59th Massachusetts Infantry which was a "veteran regiment" in which recruits had to have prior service. The regiment served in the Petersburg area and on May 24, 1864, Nathan was captured at North Anna River and taken to Danville Prison. Nathan died in early 1865, and as was the case for Union soldiers in the prison, he died of some infectious disease and malnutrition. The soldiers were initially buried in poorly marked, mass graves and later were exhumed and reinterred with individual markers in the Danville National Cemetery. Although Nathan is buried there, he is buried in one of the mass graves, so has no individual stone. Almost all of the original interments in Danville National Cemetery were [Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_(American_Civil_War)) prisoners of war who had been held in the city of Danville's tobacco warehouses which were converted into [Confederate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America) internment facilities for this purpose. Soldiers were from numerous states, including Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, NewJersey, and Wisconsin. In February 1864, the residents of Danville wrote to Secretary of War James Seddon to petition for the removal of the Yankee prisoners to "some other place" because the hospitals for the prisoners were located in the heart of the town and they were afraid the populace would be infected because the whole atmosphere of the town was filled with the smallpox and fever now raging within the limits of the corporation. The government paid them no heed.
