Stephen French
American educator, lawyer, and soldier (1844-1929)
Stephen French, Esq. (23 May 1844 – 1929) was an American educator, lawyer and Civil War veteran. He was known for being captured by the Confederate army during the American Civil War, imprisoned at Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp, having escaped captivity for five days in the forests of Georgia, and being re-captured and re-imprisoned at Andersonville. His personal account, titled "Recollections of Five Days in the Forest of Georgia 1864. Escape from Andersonville Prison. Recapture and Final Release" was published in The National Tribune as a serial in 1926 under the title "Experiences of a Prisoner in Dixieland." His entire Civil War experience, from 1862 to 1865, is the subject of a forthcoming book – A Prisoner in Dixieland: The Civil War Memoir of Stephen French – by Potomac Books (University of Nebraska Press).
Early life
Stephen French was born on 23 May 1844 in Marion County, Illinois, the son of Joseph Hartman French and Susannah Lemon Purcell. Stephen had four brothers and six sisters.
Civil War service & captivity-escape-recapture at Andersonville Prison Camp
Stephen passed his boyhood at home until the second year of the Civil War when he enlisted in the 111th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He served in the army until the close of the war, spending the last nine months of the time as a prisoner in Andersonville.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stephen French” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.