Brad Upp and Jim Remson
Jim Remsen, a retired Inquirer journalist, author of three prior books, and a past presenter; along with Brad Upp, a re-enactor with the 69th Pennsylvania Infantry, and a board member of the Lower Merion Historical Society, presented the fascinating story of Camp Discharge - a little known camp in suburban Philadelphia.
Erected in 1864 in Lower Merion, on a slope above the Schuylkill River, it had a special mission – to muster out hundreds of individual soldiers from Eastern Pennsylvania who had been cut off from their regiments in the field.
Some of the men had been waylaid by battle wounds or illness, others by detached duty. A few were deserters, while nearly half were POWs who had been held at Andersonville and elsewhere. By 1866, the post was gone, and the men had gone on to their uncertain futures in post Civil War America.
The camp was design by the same man who designed Philadelphia’s City Hall. Almost 1100 made it through this camp before it was dismantled. The only known surviving structure is a sentry building cared for by residents of nearby Sentry Lane.
Pictured below are the winners from the January book raffle.
