Mr. Alstadt was a gentleman then about sixty years of age, of very unassuming manners and amiable disposition. He, too, was examined before the Senate committee and gave a lively picture of his adventures while a prisoner. His son, Thomas, then a little boy, was taken prisoner with his father or voluntarily accompanied the party to Harper's Ferry to watch for the old gentleman's safety. Mr. Alstadt, senior, has been dead for some years, but Thomas yet survives, now a well-matured man, and he is probably the only one of the prisoners who were confined in the engine house who survives, with the possible exception of Messrs. Mills and Schoppe, of whom nothing has been heard at Harper's Ferry for the last forty years. John E. P. Dangerfield was then a man of about forty years of age and of a very delicate constitution. He bore up very well, however, and when he was released by the marines his physical strength had not given way, as his friends feared it would. At the breaking out of the war he moved to North Carolina and there he died suddenly a few years ago while on a hunt in the woods. It is supposed that his death was caused by too severe exertion while he was prosecuting a favorite sport. Armistead M. Ball was at that time a man of about forty-six years of age. He was very corpulent but, notwithstanding his great bulk, his health was delicate. He died in June, 1861, of apoplexy. As before said, he was a man of great mechanical ingenuity. He invented a rifling machine which was used for several years in the armory, and was regarded as an excellent piece of mechanism. Many people, however, believed that Mr. Ball owed much of his reputation to ideas borrowed from a man named John Wernwag who, at that time and for many years before and afterwards, lived at Harper's Ferry and whose name will hereafter appear in this history in connection with a thrilling adventure in the great flood of 1870. Mr. Wernwag was, confessedly, a great genius in mechanics, but, as he was a man of very retiring habits and taciturn disposition, he never made any show of his ability and, consequently, only a few were aware of the wealth of mechanical genius that was possessed by this unassuming man, but was lost to the world through his unfortunate bashfulness. He and Mr. Ball used to take long and frequent rambles over the neighboring heights, and it was supposed that in their conversation on those excursions the latter got many hints which he improved and practically elucidated in his mechanical devices. Benjamin Mills was a man of about fifty years of age at the time of the Brown raid, low in stature but muscular and active. As before stated, he soon after returned to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, from which place he had come to Harper's Ferry. The writer knows not whether he yet survives or not.