Trigger Guards: The Civil War in Bentonville and the Revolution in Saxapahaw

Yesterday was Black Friday, but instead of going out shopping, I took a trip down to Bentonville, NC with some friends to go detecting.  We tried a new field today that we just recently received permission to search.  It was the site of a Union artillery position during the three day Battle of Bentonville, March 19-21st, 1865.  You can see the results of my previous trips to Bentonville here and here.

We had hoped this field would produce, and we certainly weren't disappointed!  We recovered a lot of great history in a day, including knapsack pieces, horse tack, cartridge box finials, and of course, a number of bullets.  The find of the day was made by my good friend Jim, who recovered a great brass fuse adapter from a Union Hotchkiss artillery shell, shown above.  It's a great find, and locating at a Union artillery position during the battle made it even that much better.  Congrats, Jim!

Here are my finds for the day.  Some are the standard finds from most Civil War sites - brass grommets and rivets, unidentified period brass, and melted lead.  The two mushroomed bullets are particularly interesting, and were found in very close proximity to one another.  I also recovered my first Williams Cleaner bullet that has the base still attached.

One of the 58 caliber three-ring bullets is particularly interesting, and the first such bullet I have personally recovered.  It shows a bore hole from an "extracting worm", a corkscrew device used for pulling bullets out of the barrel of a gun.  This would have been done to remove a bullet stuck in the barrel, or to unload a loaded firearm to make it safe to handle without firing the bullet.

My best find of the day was the front half of a rifle trigger guard.  I believe it to be from a pattern 1853 Enfield rifle, based on the location of the hole used for a rifle sling attachment.  The Enfield was used by both sides during the war, and was the second most widely used infantry weapon.  An Enfield rifle from the Charelston Museum is shown below

Coincidentally, I just recovered another interesting trigger guard near Saxapahaw about a week ago.  I found it during one of my shorter hunts on Saxapahaw Bethlehem Church Rd.  It was the only good find that day, and at the time I hadn't yet identified it, so I held off on posting.  Since then I have identified it as an acorn finial from the front of a much earlier trigger guard.  Such finials were common on English fowler guns in the mid-late 1700's.  Several colonial era flat buttons have previously been found in the area, which also date to the same time period.

English fowlers were a type of smooth-bore flintlock musket.  They had very long barrels, and were designed for hunting game birds.  Now of course I can't say for certain that this particular gun was used in the American Revolution.  English fowler guns were, however, used during the war.  The British were typically issued Brown Bess flintlock muskets, though officers were meant to supply their own firearms, which have used such an acorn trigger guard as seen on English fowlers.  The Americans, on the other hand, pressed whatever weapons available into service.  A hunting rifle of this sort would certainly have been used by "citizen soldiers" going into battle.  Below is an original example of a 1770's-1780's musket, believed to have been used during the American Revolution, which bears a similar acorn motif trigger guard finial.  I can't say whether or not my trigger guard piece came from a musket used in the Revolution, but it is of the time period, and was found on muskets that were used during the war.

Cannonball Fragment Update

I was finally able to get a positive ID on the large iron piece found at the Battle of Bentonville a few days ago.  We suspected that it might be a cannonball fragment, but there was one thing that concerned me about it.  The fragment I found is obviously rounded on the outside, but the inside doesn't have the same curvature.  This is unlike most cannonball fragments I have seen in the past, which have a uniform thickness and equal curvature on the inside and out as seen in the cannonball example below.  The center would be filled with gunpowder, and a timing fuse placed in the hole would cause the cannonball to explode, sending several large pieces into the massed enemy soldiers.

In late 1862, Confederate Capt. John W. Mallet designed a new type of "internally segmented" exploding round ball which used a polygonal cavity inside the ball instead of a spherical one.  When the fuse ignited the gunpowder, the shell would fragment at the weak points in the shell wall producing a larger number of smaller fragments, which was meant to increase the damage to enemy troops.  The resulting fragments are rounded on the outside, but flat on the inside.  Each fragment will have a uniform shape determined by the geometry of the polygonal cavity, the most common being a pentagon shaped fragment.  This is the fragment I found, and a cross-section of a complete polygonal cavity shell is shown below.

The polygonal cavity cannonball was used exclusively by the Confederacy, and is fitting with the location it was found - alongside a line of fired confederate bullets at the site of a Union advance.  This type of shell was used only later in the war, and was the most commonly used Confederate cannonball in the 1865 Carolinas campaign.  Recall that the battle of Bentonville took place in March of 1865.  The complete ball measured 4.62 inches in diameter, and would have been fired from a smoothbore Napoleon 12 Pounder cannon, shown below.

With all of that history in technical terms above, it's sometimes necessary to step back from the academics and think about a recovered artifact in more personal, human terms.  It's hard to image the devastation that such a large exploding fragment could cause to the human body.  It's hard to imagine the fear of stepping out from the woodline and walking across that field, shoulder to shoulder, with rifles firing at you and shells exploding overhead.  It's hard to imagine the courage, on both sides of the battle, of risking and often losing life and limb to defend what you believe is right.  It is hard to imagine that this piece of iron which I hold in my hand was fired with the intention of taking another human life, and it is entirely possible that it was successful in doing so.  It is truly a humbling experience.

Special thanks to TheCannonballGuy over at TreasureNet for help in researching this article.

Detecting Report: Back to Bentonville Oct 21

John, Brad, and I went back to the Battle of Bentonville to detect a few sites where John has permission to search.  We had a really great day with a lot of fun and some really cool finds.

We started off at a site we searched on our last trip down, but a different section of the field.  John started off the day with a fired Confederate Sharps bullet right out of the gate.  I called it a three-ringer in the video, but when he cleaned it up, it turned out to be a sharps.  John also got the base from a Williams cleaner bullet from this field.  I recovered two bullets there, the first being a fired and slightly deformed 58 caliber three ring Minie ball.  The second was a really nice one - a fired Confederate Enfield bullet that struck something hard straight on.  I also found a small roundball from a buck-and-ball shot, and a large piece of iron that may or may not be an artillery fragment.  You can see it much better at the end of the video, and any thoughts on that are welcomed.

What I find most interesting is not just what we found, but how those objects support our understanding of what went on in that field almost 150 years ago.  Union forces were moving in to attack the Confederates, and would have emerged from the woods and advanced across the open field.  In the open, they took Confederate fire from the opposite woodline.  This Union advance was where we were detecting yesterday, and found several fired and struck Confederate bullets.  As the Union troops moved across the middle of the field, they dropped several of their own unfired bullets, either from a pouch as they got ammunition to load or dropped by a casualty of Confederate fire.  This middle section of the field is where we detected last time, and recovered several unfired 58 three-ringers.

After lunch we went on to a second site, where John believed there may have been a small camp.  We knew it would be either feast or famine at that spot, and unfortunately we came up empty.  So we tried a third and final site that we knew would produce better, a peanut field where the plants had recently been dug up to dry.  Detecting in between the rows, we did manage some nice finds.  Brad got his bullet for the day, a fired three ringer.  John got a nice variety of finds, including a 69 round ball, a fired Confederate Enfield bullet, and an 1888 Indian Head penny.  I picked up two more dropped three ringers in this field as well. 

I also got a small lead piece there, which at the time I believed was a carved bullet.  It turns out that what I have is the finial used for closing a leather percussion cap box.  Union issued percussion cap boxes came with brass finials, but many confederates used lead finials.  I've included a picture of a confederate percussion cap box for sale at www.jsmosby.com which shows how the lead finial attached to the cap box.  I really like this find a lot!

We had a great time preserving some history, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it!  Until next time, thanks for reading, and God bless.

A Virginia Confederate in Saxapahaw, NC

Hey everyone!  I finished up work today, and had about an hour before I could bring in and feed the horses.  So I asked my wife where I should detect around the farm, because whenever she tells me where to go I end up finding something cool.  "Well I can't now" she said "you've put me on the spot!"  But I pressed the issue, and she told me to head over towards a particular fenceline.  I had found one old coin there in the past (a no-date shield nickel), but it was mixed in with a LOT of ring-style pull tabs.  Sure enough, my hour flew by and my pouch filled with aluminum trash.

I put the detector up, brought in the horses, and passed out hay and grain.  Emily was just finishing up her lesson, and I mentioned in passing that the spot had been a bust.  "I have 15 minutes of light left" I told her "so pick another spot, and make it a good one!"

So I headed out, trying to see how many targets I could recover before the sun dipped below the trees.  The answer turned out to be just one, because what came out of the red clay stopped me in my tracks.  A two piece brass button, which I assumed was likely another Bingham Uniform button.  That's not to say Bingham buttons are common, but the close proximity to the school made it plausible.

I ran inside to clean my find, and was floored by what I saw - Civil War era Virginia State Seal button!!  The device (front image) of the button shows the figure of Virtus standing over the body of a slain tyrant, the Virginia state seal.  Above the seal reads "VIRGINIA", and below "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS" the Virginia motto meaning "Death Always to Tyrants."  

The back of the button is even more fascinating.  The backmark reads "Kent Paine & Co. Richmond" in a depressed channel.  It was made for a unified Virginia unit prior to the outbreak of the war, but pre-war state seal buttons were, of course, used throughout the war.  The shank is bent, but still intact.  The really unique thing about this particular button is a few strands of the original attachment thread, preserved in the thick clay for all these years.  This is something I have seen on dug buttons in the past, but it is an extreme rarity.  For the collectors out there, this button is Albert's reference VA13A and Tice's reference VA222A3, and a non-dug example can be seen here: front and back.

I know that troops from both sides marched within a few miles of here in 1865, but some of my area metal detecting finds lead me to suspect at least some troops moved across my farm specifically.  This Virginia seal button is a strong piece of evidence in support of this theory.  I feel very blessed to have recovered it, especially here on my own land.  And I'm thrilled to be able to share it with all of you!  Thanks for looking, I hope you enjoyed the story, and God bless!

Detecting Report: Battle of Bentonville

Yesterday I took a trip with some of my detecting friends John, Bubba, and the other Tony to a site near the Battle of Bentonville.  The battle took place over three days in March of 1865, the last major battle between General Sherman of the Union Army and General Johnston of the Confederacy.  It involved some 80,000 men with over 400 killed and 2800 wounded.  Johnston retreated from the battle, and failed in achieving a critical victory against the much larger Northern force.  He surrendered his army to General Sherman at Bennett Place near Durham just a little over a month later.

Despite some technical difficulties (my White's DFX is now in the shop for repairs), we had a great day and pulled some nice dropped bullets and worked camp lead.  Check out the video of the day.  We also had out monthly meeting of the Triangle Relic Recovery club in Raleigh after our trip.  I'm pleased to have won the "best finds" award this month for best coin (186X Nickel Three Cent) and best relic (I'll be doing a blog post on this one in the future, it's one of my best so far!).  My detecting partner Brad also won the "best display" category for the month with a truly impressive amount of historic finds including a beautiful Federal army cavalry spur, featured here.

Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoyed!  And if you really enjoyed it, please join our fan page on Facebook!

Featured Find: M1859 US Cavalry Spur, Hillsborough

This isn't my find, but it comes from my good friend Brad from Mebane.  I'm sure I'll be mentioning him in the future, as we metal detect together quite a lot.  He was detecting over in Hillsborough, NC at the kind of site I typically enjoy - not a lot of targets, but every one of them is old.  The best find for the day is this simply BEAUTIFUL model 1859 US cavalry spur.  The rowel (revolving disc) is missing from the neck, but on many dug examples the neck is broken off altogether.  The hooks for the fastening straps are bent inwards, but the yoke (body of the spur that goes around the heel) is quite straight.  The patina on this spur is simply lovely, and the characteristic M1859 foliate design around the neck shows nicely.  These spurs tend to be associated with production at the Allegheny Arsenal in Pennsylvania, and would have been issued to an enlisted cavalry soldier.  Overall, this is one of the better Civil War finds I have seen recovered in this area in recent months.

Congratulations, Brad, on the stellar find!