Rock River Valley CWRT 'Talks' 2024-- Part 2

JULY 1:  Bjorn Skeptason  "Battery H in the Atlanta Campaign"

AUGUST 5:  Bob Girardi  "Civil War Engineers"

SEPTEMBER  9:  Dwight Hughes  "Battle of Hampton Roads"  Okay, about time they had a talk on the naval side of the war!!

OCTOBER 7:  TBA

NOVEMBER Douglas Egerton  "Thunder at the Gates"

DECEMBER 2:  Daniel Weinberg  "Dealing in Historical Artifacts"

So, That's What They Talk About.  --Old Secesh

While On the Subject: Some Other George Washington Artifacts In the New York State Library

**  George Washington's Farewell Address written in his own handwriting when he decided not to run for a third term as president.

**  Washington's first career was as a surveyor and the library has  some of his drawing instruments as well as a compass made by David Rittenhouse, a celebrated Philadelphia instrument-maker.

**  An exceedingly rare copy of "Representation of the Clothing of His Majesty's Household and  of all the Forces upon the Establishments of Great Britain and Ireland."  A book of British military uniforms received by Washington in 1847.

**  A bronze bust of Washington

**  A statement of household expenses from 1789.

**   A manuscript "Opinion of  the Surviving Generals of the Revolution" penned by Washington.

The items in this collection were purchased  by the State of New York from Mrs. Lewis  W. Washington in  1871.  Mrs. Washington was the widow of Col. Lewis W. Washington, who was the grandson of Willaim Augustine Washington, who was a nephew of George Washington.

--Old Secesh

Lewis Washington-- Part 3: What Happened At the Trial and the George Washington Artifacts

During John Brown's trial for treason against the State of Virginia, Lewis Washington testified as a witness for the prosecution.  During the cross-examination, Washington testified that Brown had treated his hostages well and gave orders not to harm civilians.

When the Civil War began, Lewis sided with the Confederacy.  On July 17, 1865, he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson.

Many pieces of the Washington family, including the sword given George Washington by Frederick the Great and the pistols from Lafayette, were donated to the New York State Library by his widow in 1871.

Lewis Washington married twice, and one of his sons was James Barroll Washington, the friend of Custer.  James had one son, William Lanier Washington, who died in 1933, but had sold the rest of the Washington of the family collection of George Washington heirlooms at public auction in 1917.

--Old Secesh

Digging Up the Fayetteville Arsenal Site

From the July 28, 2019, Fayetteville (NC) Observer "Archaeology  unearth Fayetteville history at Arsenal Park" by Paul Woolverton.

And the public can watch it as it happens.  Some of the items recovered from the site of the old Fayettevillesenal are a smoking pipe, melted glass, various nails, screws, lots of brick, mortar and sandstone.

The Arsenal Park is now part of the Museum of Cape Fear History complex and eventually the North Carolina Civil War and Reconstruction History center will be built on the site which is why the archaeologists are excavating.

The Fayetteville Arsenal was built in the mid-1800s by the U.S. government to make weapons.  Confederates took control in 1861 and constantly expanded the works and made rifles and other weapons of war.  When William Sherman's army marched through in 1865, he had everything at the site knocked down and then set the ruins on fire.

--Old Secesh

Lincoln Relics Could Go At Auction-- Part 3: State-Owned Copy of Gettysburg Address Written By Lincoln

One item that absolutely won't be sold is the rare copy of  the Gettysburg Address, written in Lincoln's own hand.  This long-held showcase document wasn't part of the Taper collection.

Illinois has a collection of tens of thousands of  artifacts that draws researchers from around the world to research.

However, the Foundation does have some time to raise the money.  The loan doesn't come up for renewal until October 2019.  The lender, who was not disclosed has been helpful in terms in the past.

Of course, Illinois is saddled with a long-running dispute between Governor Bruce Rauner and Speaker of the House Michael Madigan which has hurt state finances.  Luckily, in the past, these two have negotiated on issues surrounding the Lincoln complex

If worse comes to worse, I'd say sell the non-Lincoln items.

Here's Hoping Something Good Comes of This.  --Old Secesh

Lincoln Relics Could Go On Auction Block-- Part 2: Dloves Worn By Him at Ford's Theatre

These financial issues stem from a $23 million loan taken out to bankroll the 2007 purchase of a trove of Lincoln and non-Lincoln artifacts.  The Foundation bought a collection of over 1000 items from Louise Taper of Beverly Hills, California.  Her estate also donated items as well.

The Taper collection included a beaver fur stovepipe hat that library officials believe was worn by Lincoln.  There is also a Lincoln billfold and eyeglasses.  A major thing in the collection is the pair of  gloves he was wearing when assassinated with some of his blood on them.

There are also non-Lincoln items like a dress worn by Marilyn Monroe.

The popular Abraham Lincoln Museum has drawn more than 4 million visitors to Springfield since it opened in 2005.  If you have never been to it, plan for a trip soon.

--Old Secoln

Lincoln Relics Could Go On Auction Block-- Part 1

From the May 11, 2018, Chicago Tribune by Ray Long.

"The Land of Lincoln is in such financial disarray, it is looking at selling some of the Lincoln.

"The foundation that supports the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum indicated Thursday that prestigious memorabilia tied to the home-state 16th president could be sold to help pay back a loan taken out to buy a trove of items more than a decade ago."

One of the items that might be sold is a stovepipe hat believed to have been worn by Lincoln.

There is a remaining debt of $9.7 million on the loan.

Will the state help?  A spokesman for Governor Bruce Rauner called the museum a "jewel for the state."

The state runs the Lincoln library and museum.  The foundation is separately run and raises private funds to support the complex.

--Old Lincoln

This Artifact Ain't So Real

From the July 2017 America's Civil War. "X-Ray Vision."

A picture of a tree with a shell embedded in it.

Lt. Colonel Archibald Blakely's 78th Pennsylvania Infantry fought in the woods near the Brotherton Farm at the 1863 Battle of Chickamauga, and during a postwar trip to the battlefield he obtained this shell-struck tree trunk as a reminder of the the fight.

Sorry, Colonel, you fell for a fake.  A team at Pittsburgh's Senator John Heinz History Center, where the object was exhibited, X-rayed the stump and discovered that someone had cut a shell in half, placed it in a man-made cavity, and let the tree heal around the opening so it looked natural.

Some shrewd local had anticipated a market of Civil War veterans avid for souvenirs of a time when "their hearts were touched by fire."

There's One Born Every second.  --Old Secesh

Ten Fascinating Civil War Artifacts From Tennessee-- Part 4: A Tintype and Doctor's Kit

7.  PIRKLE FAMILY LIVES ON--  A tintype image of brothers Elijah and Jesse Pirkle in uniform.  They joined the Union Army in July 1863.  Two months later and within 15 days of each other, Elijah was shot and hospitalized and Jesse was captured and imprisoned.

8.  DOCTOR'S KIT--  The doctor's kit was found in Gallatin and was owned by Confederate Dr. Thomas Morris Woodson, who died in 1907.  It contains, among other things, a menacing looking tooth extractor and trepanning drills used to bore into a skull to release pressure.

I feel A Bit Light-Headed.  --Old Secesh

Ten Fascinating Civil War Artifacts from Tennessee-- Part 3:

Continued from November 4, 2016.

5.  LINCOLN'S NOTE--  Union soldier Henry Jenks and a friend dug their way out of Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and made it back to Union lines.  Once there, he posed for a tintype photo and got a letter signed by Lincoln permitting him to return to their regiments.

6.  CONFEDERATE SOLDIER'S DIARY--  Roysdon Robertson Etter, 16th Tennessee.  One of his entries, dated November 30, 1864, is about the disastrous Battle of Franklin.  One of his statements:  "The ground could not be seen because of the crush of dead soldiers."

Love Those Artifacts.  --Old Secesh

Ten Fascinating War Artifacts From Tennessee-- Part 2:Button and a Spy Map

3.  UNION BUTTON--  Tony Guin holds a collection of Union buttons discovered at a construction site off the Charlotte Pike.  Almost 200 buttons found in what had been a Civil War burn pile which was part of a field hospital for small pox victims.  No doubt they were from burned uniforms,

4.  SPY MAP OF NASHVILLE--  A hand-drawn Confederate map made in pencil showing downtown Nashville, gun positions along the Cumberland River, fortifications around the State Capitol building, a military graveyard and Fort Negley.

It also recommends approaches to the city.  A lot of spying going on around Middle Tennessee.

--Old Secesh

Ten Fascinating War Artifacts From Tennessee-- Part 1: A Half Boot and a Drum

From the Nashville Tennesseean.

The Looking Back Project in Tennessee, sponsored by the State Library and Archives has sent teams of archivists and conservators across the state to document artifacts in the possession of every day Tennesseeans.

Some 4,000 of them have been documented over the last four years.

1.  HALF BOOT--  Customized by a Union cobbler for injured and hospitalized a Confederate soldier named David Dotson, who was wounded at the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee.

2.  UNION DRUM--    Union bass drum with writing on it around the drumhead with the names of the battles of Shiloh, Chickamauga and Stone's River.

--Old Secesh

Lincoln's Blood Relics-- Part 4: Swatch of Laura Keene's Costume

SWATCH OF LAURA KEENE'S COSTUME

This one I'd never heard of before.

After Booth fled Ford's Theatre, actress and star of the show Our American Cousin, Laura Keene, rushed to the President's Box where she discovered Dr.Charles Leale had laid Lincoln on the floor.  She knelt beside the unconscious president and cradled his head in her lap.

Blood and brain matter oozed from the bullet wound onto her silken costume, staining its floral pattern.

Laura Keene cherished this relic, but it soon became the object of morbid curiosity.  Strangers tried to cut swatches of it as gruesome keepsakes.  Unfortunately, the dress has disappeared to history, but somehow, five of those swatches survived and have become legendary among collectors.

There is a picture of one of the swatches with the article and the whereabouts of it was unknown until it surfaced in the 1990s and the author acquired it.

According to a letter he got along with it from Keen's grandson, it was given to a family friend  The bright floral pattern remains today just as bright as it had been 150 years ago when it was made by dressmaker Jamie Bullock.  But the bloodstains have long-since faded to a pale rust-brown.

--Old Secesh

Civil War Ring Returned-- Part 1

From the April 8, 2013, WFMZ (Pa) News "Civil War ring found in Virginia given to owner's descendant in Berks" by Kevin Fitzsimmons.

John Blue found a Civil War ring using a metal detector in Virginia which had the name Levi Schlegel on it.  He did some research and eventually found a descendant in Reading, Pennsylvania.  Ernest Schlegel is a trustee at the Reading Public Library.

The two met Tuesday at Levi Schlegel's garve and the ring was returned to his family after all these years.

Levi Schlegel was born in 1841 and lived until 1932.

I'll need to find out some more on this story.

Now This Is an Interesting Story.  --Old Secesh

150th Anniversary Stirs a Trove of Memories

From the Dec. 26, 2011, Fox News.

There is a diary with a life-saving hole in it and a homemade Valentine's Day card.

The Valentine is on pink paper shaped like a heart using an intricate basket weave and was sent to Confederate soldier Robert H. King by his wife Louisa.  King was killed in 1862.

There is also a diary kept by a soldier in his breast pocket.  It stopped a bullet that would have killed him.  Thankful, no doubt, but the soldier continued writing in it.  Of course, he had to write around the hole.

Just Some Interesting Little Bits of the War.  --Old Secesh

Union Code Books Surface- Part 2

The Eckert collection's existence was not known by historians until 2009 when an owner, who had bought it ftom Eckert's descendants, put 76 books up for auction in New York City and it sold for $36,000.  The new owners declined to reveal how much they spent.

Archives elsewhere contain militasry y\telegrams, but they are individual paper slips or pages copied from telegram and are haphazardly archived with many missing.  The Eckert collection offers a systematic, centralized record in chronological order.

Lincoln spent many hours in the telegraph office of the War department which was located near the White House.

The Exkert collection shows that Lincoln had an assortment of aliases: Ida, India, Irving, Ingress, Ingrate and Ingot.  Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was Indigo or Infant.  If a message said "shaker" or "sable," it meant that an attack was to take place.  The code for infantry was "rapture" and "ramble."

Evidence of insider trading was even found according to how a battle ended and the price of cotton and gold.

Seaky, Very, Very Sneaky.  The Old "Ingrate."  --Old Secesh

Union Code Books Surface-- Part 1

From The January 26th Chicago Tribune "Union code books surface, but too late for Johnny Reb" by Mike Boehm.

"A long-unknown, 150-year-oldtrove of handwritten ledgers and calfskin-covered code books, which giive a potentially revelatory glimpse into both the dawn of electronic battlefield communications and the day-to-day exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and his generals as they fought the Civil War, now belongs to a California research institution."

The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Btanical Gardens acquired these in a private sale January 23rd and includes 40 cardboard-covered albums of messages written by telegraph operators and walletlike booklets containing key codewords that Union commanders used to keep snoopy Confederates from finding out what they were saying.

The ledgers had been kept by Thomas Eckert who ran the US military telegraph office at the War department from 1863 to 1862.  There are also messages from 1862 when he served as telegraph chief for General McClellan.

More than 100 of the telegrams transcribed were sent by Lincoln, many showing his frustration with McClellan.

More to Come.  --Old Secesh

Mr. Lincoln's Opera Glasses-- Part 3

I have not yet come across any articles about what Lee's letter, the CSS Alabama's flag or Lincoln's opera glasses sold for. I would also still like to know more about the Alabama flag.

In 1979, the opera glasses were sold by a collector who had bought them from McCamly's descendants. The late publisher Malcolm Forbes bought them for $20,000. In 2002, they were sold again, for a record amount. In 2005, an ad appeared in the New York Times saying the person had bought them from the Forbes collection and offered them for $2.5 million.

Evidently, they didn't sell at that price. The identity of the seller is secret, but a 2008 Chicago paper said it was William Kaper, Jr.

For Some Reason, I Don't Think I Can Afford Them. --Old B-Runner

Mr. Lincoln's Opera Glasses-- Part 2

Continued from June 11th.

McCamly "picked them (the opera glasses) up and put them in his pocket. he stayed with the body until it was taken to the White House at which time...he returned to his quarters and...discovered he had the glasses."

In 1968, McCamly's great grandson was told by the National Park Service that the glasses fit nicely into an opera glass case that had been "picked up in the Lincoln box" which still has the black leather, red-satin-lined case in the NPS's Ford's Theatre Collection.

The former curator of the theatre's Lincoln artifacts, Gloria Swift, thinks the box belonged to Mary Todd, whose opera glasses weer also found in the box.

Many are skeptical of the McCamly story as doctors examined Lincoln in the theatre and doubt that the glasses would have still been on his person. However, the glasses have been tested in the collectors' market and found to be authentic. Sotheby's claims it is as close to authentic as you can get.

More to Come. --Old B-Runner

Mr. Lincoln's Opera Glasses?-- Part 1

From the June 8th Washington Post "Lincoln's Opera Glasses from Ford's Theatre to be auctioned."

They were found in the middle of Tenth Street after the president was carried from the theatre to the Peterson House and that fateful night. It was kept by the Union officer who found it and then his family kept it for generations until 1979 when it was sold at auction for $22,000, a record sale for a Lincoln object.

In 2002, it was sold again, this time for $424,000, another record. This time, the black and gold theater glasses Lincoln was believed to have with him when he was shot that night might go for $700,000 at the June 17th Sotheby's auction in New York City.

Also to be sold is a handwritten letter from Robert E. Lee discussing his resignation from the US Army and a flag from the CSS Alabama, so this is a real big-time sale.


HISTORY OF THE GLASSES

The German-made glasses were found by Captain James M. McCamly of the 70th New York infantry regiment who was with the Washington city guard that night. He helped carry Lincoln across the street to the Peterson boarding house. According to the auction catalogue, "As Lincoln was being transported, the opera glasses--perhaps still in Lincoln's hands, perhaps tangled in his clothing-- fell to the street."

McCamly picked them up.

More to Come. --Old B-R'er