John and I exchanged information last April on his ancestor who was Captain Nero G. BRADFORD, Company I, 26th North Carolina Infantry. Captain BRADFORD was a member of the Immortal 600 sent from Fort Delaware on 20 AUG 1864 and returned to Fort Delaware on 12 MAR 1865. Relative to the cowhorn, John wrote: >>> He used a penknife and a needle to carve it and then used cedar charcoal to shine it. That's the story that has been handed down. <<<

I have not yet come across any written policy relative to pen knives in the possession of POWs at Fort Delaware, but there was a thriving ring and trinket carving business going on in both the officers pen and the enlisted pen. This was done in the open and condoned and supported by the garrison, both officers and enlisted guards. Knives suitable for carving intricate items out of bones, gutta percha, etc. were allowed in practice if not by written policy.

The best collection of first hand accounts of the incarceration of the Immortal 600 at Fort Pulaski that I know of comes from John Ogden Murray's "The Immortal Six Hundred: A Story of Cruelty to Confederate Prisoners of War" originally published in 1905. A paperback reprint is currently available. Murray was a member of the Immortal 600. There is no index to this work. You would have to go through it line by line looking for an answer to what the Immortal 600 were allowed to do to entertain themselves at Fort Pulaski.

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society