In late June, Clara received a note from one Dorence Atwater who requested a meeting with her concerning information he had about approximately 13,000 of the missing men she was looking for.  Intrigued, Clara visited Atwater at his Washington hotel.  Atwater had enlisted at the beginning of the war, even though he was only 16.  Captured after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, he was first imprisoned at Belle Isle and then transferred to Andersonville when it opened in February 1864.  Impressed by Atwater’s superior penmanship, the commander of Andersonville, General John H. Winder, assigned him to the surgeon’s office with orders to keep an official record of all union prisoners who died and were buried there.  The Confederates promised they would turn the roll over to the Union government after the war, but Atwater suspected their sincerity as he experienced the cruelty of the prison and recorded over 100 deaths per day.