Bill, I research Camp Ford which was a POW camp near Tyler, Texas. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time at the National Archives, and a part of material that I found were the prisoner exchange lists. I also got the Camp Groce lists, because there was some overlap. I don't believe that the Las Rucios prisoners were ever here. However as 504 men from Ford were transferred to Groce, I had to abstract the Groce lists to identify the Camp Ford prisoners. There is a problem working with Camp Groce. There are very few records and the QM department never abstracted the prison cemetery. The Camp was hit very hard by Yellow Fever in the fall of 1864, and had about a 30 % mortaility rate. Of the prisoners transferred from Ford, only 358 were paroled. Some might have escaped, but most probably died. Groce was closed in December 1864, and all of the prisoners were paroled at Galveston and turned over to the federal navy for transport.

I abstracted all of the prisoners into a data base, and I show 20 men of the 1st Texas as being paroled, and your forebearers name is not on the list. There were reported escapes from that camp, but due to the lack of records they are difficult to identify. I can only document one. The material is on microfilm, but I could try to send you the relevant portions of the data base relating to the 1st Texas. Microsoft Access is great for storage but difficult for output.

Randy Gilbert