Civil War refugees' story featured at encampment event

A little-known part of Fort Scott's history during the Civil War will come to light this weekend, thanks to National Park Service ranger Rosemary Frey's decade-long dedication.

At 11 a.m. Sunday at the Fort Scott National Historic Site, Frey will present findings from research she concluded late last year on lesser known civilian war casualties in Fort Scott during the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, one of the bloodiest conflicts in U.S. history.

Frey has a master's degree in history and mainly focuses on civilian history in her work. She said she began collecting primary source material on forgotten refugees in Fort Scott about 10 years ago, when she first began researching the topic that has received only minimal attention in books and other literature.

"I was really intrigued by this, and I wanted to know more," she said. "That story has not been told."

Frey said trying to locate information about civilian war casualties during the Civil War era in Fort Scott was like "trying to find a needle in a haystack."

Her program is part of the 25th annual Civil War Encampment on Saturday and Sunday at FSNHS, an event that consists of educational programs, living history demonstrations, live period music, and other activities and programs.

Frey was able to complete a vast amount of research on the topic through a grant from the Western National Parks Association, which has supported scientific research in U.S. national parks since 1974. The WNPA provided more than $112,000 in funds for 17 separate projects, including the research project that Frey initiated, titled "Forgotten Casualties of War: A Historical Research Prospectus for Fort Scott."

Frey said she used that grant money to pay for travel and lodging expenses for the many research trips that she has conducted, the last of which occurred last winter.

During her research, Frey said she collected a large amount of information from articles published in Fort Scott newspapers at the time. For example, one such newspaper said that in November 1862, thousands of Native Americans came to Fort Scott, Frey said. At that time, many civilians and soldiers endured a long, cold winter, and deadly diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.

"These people had nothing to go home to," she said.

In Fort Scott during the mid-1800s, the refugee population in Fort Scott consisted primarily of runaway slaves and Native Americans, most of whom were women and children, Frey said. Other refugees included men who, for a variety of different reasons, were not able to fight in the war, she said. Because many of these people were homeless and had nowhere else to go, they fled the country for Europe and other regions overseas.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, there were several babies abandoned and left on people's doorsteps, and thousands of other displaced women and children were left with nothing, Frey said.

"No one was caring for these people," Frey said. "Many were displaced by the ongoing activity of the war."

During this time period, Fort Scott served as a major refugee center, military outpost and supply depot. Women at the time served several purposes in society, while their husbands and sons were off at war, Frey said. As needed supplies continued to dwindle, women would provide their families with clothing and dwellings built from old lumber, she said.

There was also a major population surge in Fort Scott during the mid-1800s, and many refugees were offloaded at the army headquarters. This population boom can mainly be attributed to Fort Scott's role as a military outpost during the mid-to-late 1800s, Frey said. This fact is evidenced in that Fort Scott, at the start of the Civil War in 1861, had a population of less than 300 people. By 1870, there were more than 4,000 people in Fort Scott, she said.

The conflict actually played a huge part in Fort Scott's growth."The war helped build Fort Scott," she said.