Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Andersonville, GA

Andersonville is a city in Sumter County in southwestern Georgia, located about 60 miles southwest of Macon on the Central of Georgia railroad and part of the Americus micropolitan area.

The settlement began as the hamlet of Anderson, named for John Anderson, a director of the South Western Railroad, when the line was extended through the area in 1853.

When a post office was established in November 1855, the name was changed from Anderson to Andersonville to avoid confusion with Anderson, South Carolina.

During the Civil War, the Confederate army built Camp Sumter at Andersonville, and the first Union prisoners began arriving in February 1864.

The Andersonville Prison became notorious for overcrowding and deadly conditions, and nearly 13,000 Union prisoners died there during the war.

By August 1864 the enlarged 26-acre stockade held more than 32,000 prisoners at once, making it the largest Confederate military prison of the war.

After the war, camp commandant Henry Wirz was hanged on November 10, 1865, becoming the only person in the United States ever executed for war crimes.

The prison site is now preserved as Andersonville National Historic Site, which also includes the national cemetery where the prisoners who died at the camp are buried.

During the war the village itself served as a supply depot, with a post office, depot, blacksmith shop, general stores, two saloons, a school, and a Methodist church.

Large-scale mining of kaolin, bauxitic kaolin, and bauxite began near Andersonville in 1968, with the Mullite Company of America working some 2,000 acres of former scrub oak land.