From an article found on pages 1 and 7 of the March 8, 1917 issue of the Simcoe [Ontario, Canada] Reformer:

On the outbreak of the Civil War in the United States Edwin R. Powell enlisted in the Seventh Michigan Regiment which became a part of the Army of the Potomac, and took part in the sanguinary battles of Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Antietam, Gettysburg and Cold Harbor, and escaped without serious injury.

Mr. Powell, and many others, being taken prisoner, were taken to Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia, then transferred to the infamous starvation stockade at Andersonville, Georgia, where many thousands of Union soldiers died of hunger and exposure.

He told the writer of wagons coming in every morning for the dead, who were piled up like cordwood and taken to the cemetery nearby.

This continued for many months.

At length, an exchange of prisoners was made.

The worst cases were taken first, of whom Mr. Powell was one, being reduced by starvation, exposure and disease caused thereby, until he was helpless.

He had to be carried to the railway train and from the train to the transport, en route to the Military Hospital at Baltimore, where he was nursed back to comparative activity, but he never fully recovered from the effects of his imprisonment.

Edwin R Powell