Henry Victor Booth, left, as a three-year-old boy, poses next to his father Isham J. Booth, who was 72 when the boy was born.
(AP Photo/Courtesy of Family- Athens Banner-Herald, File)ELBERTON, Ga. – Henry Victor Booth may be the only man alive whose father worked guard duty at Georgia’s infamous Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp, where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died during the Civil War that began 150 years ago.
“He said that was the awfulest place he’d ever seen in his life – he said people were dying there like flies,” Booth said.
Booth, who sometimes raises eyebrows when people learn he is the son of a Confederate soldier, has told the story many times over the years.
His father, Isham Johnson Booth, was born in 1847 and enlisted in 1863 when he was 16.
After Booth’s first wife died, he married the younger Miranda Lou Dunn.