Prison Number 6

Built for use as a tobacco factory and leased to the Confederate government, this building housed many Federal soldiers captured in the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg in July 1864. It was one of six buildings used in tobacco manufacturing that housed more than 7,000 Union prisoners from November 1863 to April 1865. A smallpox epidemic caused the deaths of a large number of prisoners early in 1864, and 1,323 prisoners died during the 16 months Danville served as a prison compound. Most of the dead were buried on a section of ground on Lee Street that became the Danville National Cemetery in 1867. Robert E. Lee, writing to Secretary of War James A. Seddon on October 28, 1863, suggested Danville as a prison site because it lay on the Danville Railroad near the North Carolina border, where wood was cheap, provisions were abundant, and enemy raids were unlikely. The original three-story Gothic Revival structure, with twin turrets and a recessed single-bay facade, measured 90 by 40 feet, but substantial alterations in 1915 radically changed the interior, adjusted floor heights, and relocated windows. The present four-story building measures 95 by 70 feet, functioned as a leaf tobacco factory until 1937, and from then until the early 1970s served as a general merchandise store; it is commonly known today as the C.R. Thomas building.

Danville, Virginia · United States