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After 139 years and fourteen days, Confederate Navy Lieutenant Edward John Kent Johnston to return to his home in Fernandina, Florida on Amelia Island.  He was laid to rest at the feet of his wife, Virginia, and their children in their family plot at Bosque Bello Cemetery on October 26, 2002 at 2 o’clock on a humid, overcast Southern afternoon. 

It took a year’s combined dedication of members of Sons of Confederate Veterans, Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services, Daughters of the Confederacy and other persons devoted to the history of the Civil War to make this happen.  

Several hundred people and I, along with 40 of Lt. Johnston’s descendents, turned out to witness the long awaited event, which began with his death in Fort Warren on George’s Island in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. 

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Johnston worked his way to America on ships and later on the railroad in Jacksonville, Florida.  He was married in the St. Augustine Cathedral in St. Augustine, Florida in 1852, and enlisted in the Confederate Navy in 1861. 

Johnston served as an engineer on the CSS Atlanta.  The ship was captured by Union ships on June 17, 1863 at the mouth of the Savannah River.  While a Union prisoner in Fort Warren, a prisoner of war (POW) camp, the lieutenant succumbed to pneumonia.  He was buried the next day outside prison walls.  Because of post closings, the federal government moved his grave three times over the years, the last place being in Massachusetts at Fort Devens. 

Although there are said to still be many Confederate war dead in Georgia and New York, it is thought Lt. Johnston was the last Confederate POW who was buried in New England. 

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