John McKinney Howell (1833-1889) was born in Houston County, Georgia. In 1862 he enlisted in Co. C, Mell's Regiment at Greensboro, Georgia. In July 1864 he was sent to Andersonville Prison (Sumter County, Ga.) as a surgeon. He was married to Emma Berrien Heard (1841-1918).
"In February 1864, during the Civil War (1861-65), a Confederate prison was established in Macon County, in southwest Georgia, to provide relief for the large number of Union prisoners concentrated in and around Richmond, Virginia. The new camp, officially named Camp Sumter, quickly became known as Andersonville, after the railroad station in neighboring Sumter County beside which the camp was located. By the summer of 1864, the camp held the largest prison population of its time, with numbers that would have made it the fifth-largest city in the Confederacy. By the time it closed in early May 1865, those numbers, along with the sanitation, health, and mortality problems stemming from its overcrowding, had earned Andersonville a reputation as the most notorious of Confederate atrocities inflicted on Union troops." - "Andersonville Prison." New Georgia Encyclopedia. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org (Retrieved October 23, 2008)
From the description of John McKinney Howell letters, 1864. (University of Georgia). WorldCat record id: 471439366
