Attributed to Max Neugas (Born c. 1836)

The first inscribed in pencil on the reverse: Given to my father by Uncle Ben... P. on his return from imprisonment in 1865. B. Craig Patterson (Drawn by a prisoner); the second inscribed in pencil on the reverse: Mother says these drawings were given to my father W. Patterson by my uncle Capt. Benj. Patterson. It was drawn by one of the prisoners at the Fort. Benj. Patterson 1907

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Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River was first identified as an ideal location for fortification by Pierre L’Enfant in the late eighteenth-century, but Fort Delaware was not erected until the 1820s. During the Civil War the Fort was converted to a Union prison, which held federal Army convicts, privateers, and political prisoners, as well as Confederate prisoners-of-war; most of the rebels captured at Gettysburg were incarcerated at Fort Delaware. Special barracks and a 600-bed hospital were constructed for the prisoners, and while conditions at Fort Delaware were not as desperate as at many other POW prisons in both the South and the North, by war’s end nearly 33,000 Confederates and other prisoners were cramped into it quarters. About 2,500 prisoners died while in custody at Fort Delaware, nearly half of whom perished in a smallpox epidemic the swept the Fort in 1863.

Captain Benjamin Givens Patterson was born in Augusta County, Virginia on Feb. 3, 1832, the son of John Allen Patterson and Mary Craig Patterson. In 1860, before the Civil War began, a new cavalry company in Harrisonburg, Virginia, elected John H. Hopkins Captain and Benjamin Patterson 1st Lieutenant. The next year, following the outbreak of war, this unit became Company 1, Harrisonburg Cavalry, 1st Regiment, Wickham's Brigade. Benjamin resigned from this company on August 18, 1861, and formed a company of cavalry which operated as Partisan Rangers behind Union lines. On March 4, 1864, Benjamin's company became Company B in the 41st Batalion, Virginia Cavalry, which in April 1864 became the 23rd Regiment, Virginia Cavalry.

On September 22, 1864, when his regiment was part of General Jubal Early's army fighting near Strausburg, Virginia, Benjamin was wounded at the Battle of Fisher's Hill, captured and sent to Fort Delaware. He was finally released at the end of the war in May 28, 1865.

After the war, he married Frances Coiner, sold 342 acres on the east side of South River near Harriston, Virginia, property he had inherited from his mother's family, the Craig's, and entered law school in Harrisonburg. He became a successful lawyer and served in the Virginia House of Delegates in the 1890s. Benjamin died March 9, 1900.

Max Neugas, a Jewish Confederate soldier and artist (born in Germany, circa 1836) was a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware from 1863 to 1865. He created a series of detailed drawings of Fort Delaware and Pea Patch Island, providing a record of the life and architecture of the fort. Neugas joined the Confederate Army in South Carolina and fought in several Civil War battles. He was captured by Union troops after the Battle of Gettysburg and imprisoned at Fort Delaware.

 Although executed in watercolor rather than pencil, the present pair of drawings relate closely to other known examples of Neugas' work.