Dorence Atwater

Dorence Atwater (February 3, 1845 – November 26, 1910) was a Union Army soldier and later a businessman and diplomat who served as the United States Consul to Tahiti.

In July 1863, during the American Civil War, Atwater was captured by the Confederate Army and found himself among the first batch of prisoners at the notorious Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. He is notable for having created the Andersonville Death Register while imprisoned there, which recorded the identities of his fellow prisoners. He secretly made a copy of his list of the dead and missing which later allowed him, in cooperation with Clara Barton, to mark the graves of otherwise unknown soldiers.

After the Civil War, Atwater was sent to the Seychelles and later Tahiti as a United States Consul. He was a proficient businessman who worked with lepers and other charities and was beloved by the Tahitian people, who named him "Tupuuataroa" (Wise Man).

Prisoner-of-war One morning in July 1863, Atwater was exercising his horse in the woods when he was captured by two Confederates disguised in Yankee uniforms. The Battle of Gettysburg had just occurred, and a new prison named Camp Sumter in southwest Georgia, known to the prisoners as Andersonville and to Atwater as "hell itself", had just opened. Andersonville had a quota of 400 prisoners a day. The Confederates picked up Atwater on their way through Richmond, Virginia, and he was among the first prisoners to be marched to Andersonville.

Atwater was ill when he arrived and was put into the prison hospital. Upon his recovery, his handwriting was discovered again, and he was given the task of keeping the "Death List", a register of those who had died at the camp. He was ordered to produce two copies, one for the Confederates and one which, he was told, would go to the United States federal government. He suspected the Union would never see this copy and decided to keep his own list, hidden among the papers of the ones belonging to the Confederates. All the while, Atwater knew that if the prison leader, Captain Henry Wirz, discovered what he was doing, he would be hanged.

In September 1864 the prisoners from Andersonville were transferred to Florence, South Carolina. On February 27, 1865, Atwater was released to Union authorities. He smuggled the list out with him. He was later appointed U.S. Consul to the Seychelles Islands. The death list was eventually published by the federal government and reprinted by The New York Tribune. In Tahiti he fell in love with Princess Moetia Salmon, or "Moe", the sister of Queen Marau and the second consort of King Pōmare V of Tahiti. Moetia had been educated in France and England. They were married in 1875.

Death and legacy Atwater died on November 26, 1910, in San Francisco, at the age of 65.

He was interred in San Francisco while the royals of Tahiti planned to have his body returned. Atwater was the first non-royal to be given a royal funeral in Tahiti. He was buried beneath a 7000 lb stone. On one side is carved "Tupuuataroa" (Wise Man). On the other side, the inscription reads, "He builded better than he knew that one day he might awake in surprise to found he had wrought a monument more enduring than brass." Princess Moe died in 1935, at the age of 87, and is buried next to Atwater.