Archaeologists found 500 Civil War items, including cannonballs, during tar cleanup in Columbia, S.C., river. Here's some of what they found in 'literal war zone'

Grapeshot, canister, 6-pound round (Photos courtesy of Sean Norris, TRC, 2023)

Some of the captured weapons and ammunition that Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s troops dumped into the Congaree River in Columbia, S.C., in the last months of the Civil War reemerged during a recent environmental project that removed tar from the riverbed.

Hundreds of Civil War artifacts have been recovered, including cannonballs, canister, remnants of a saber and wagon wheel and dozens of bullets. In February 1865, Sherman’s men threw Confederate war materiel into the river after they took what they wanted before marching to North Carolina.

Much of the South Carolina capital went up in flames after the city's surrender.

State, local and Dominion Energy this week announced the completion of the work. Tests showed the material found near downtown in 2010 was coal tar created by manufactured gas plants that operated throughout Columbia more than century ago.

Starting in June 2022, crews installed cofferdams and dewatering pumps at two so they could work on a dry riverbed. Dominion Energy said. Some 35,000 tons of sediment was removed.

The Civil War Picket reached out to Sean Norris, program archaeologist for TRC Companies, a subcontractor for Dominion Energy that performed archaeological work. His responses have been edited and some questions have been reordered.

Q. Were all of the artifacts recovered since June 2022? Were they found in a particular area, or were they scattered?

A. A small amount of ordnance was recovered during the early phases of this project as far back as 2015. The vast majority of the ordnance was recovered this year. (Photo above of some artifacts courtesy of Sean Norris, TRC, 2023.)

Q.  Can you give me an approximate number of Civil War artifacts recovered?

 A. We anticipate close to 500 pieces of ordnance and Civil War-related artifacts, in addition to thousands of historic and pre-contact period artifacts.

Q. Can you please provide some specifics on the Civil War items? 

A. We do not have a finalized inventory yet. But of note, we have the following:

-- 10” shells (right) with fuse wells for wood fuse plug (photo courtesy of Sean Norris, TRC)-- Iron canister balls (five sizes)

-- Iron grapeshot balls, 2,”

-- Iron canister top and bottom plates for 24-pounder

-- 6-pounder solid shot cannon balls (one with a Bormann fuse)

-- 12-pounder common shells with wood fuse plugs

-- .69-caliber musket balls

-- .69-caliber Burton pattern Minie bullet

-- .577/58-caliber Pritchett bullet

-- .577/.58-caliber Pritchett bullets, short pattern

--  An encrusted saber is currently going through some stabilization and cleaning. 

Q. Are all of the Civil War items dumped in the river believed to be Confederate? Were they tossed in by Sherman's troops?

A. All the ordnance appears to be from the Confederate armories around the downtown area. None appear to have been fired.

Q. How deep were most of the artifacts when found?

A. All were found in the riverbed after it was dewaters.  Some were up to three feet deep in sediment.

Q. Can you tell me about parts of a wagon wheel, what makes that particularly interesting?

Burning of Columbia in Feb. 1865 (William Waud, Library of Congress)

A. There are reports in the records and in diaries of an explosion happening during the dumping of the ordnance. The explosion apparently blew up a wagon and oxen team and three federal soldiers, including Capt. Williamson M. Davis, who is buried in the Florence, S.C. national cemetery. The wagon wheel matches the size and characteristics of a military wagon; there is evidence of charring on the spokes of the wheel. It is possible that this wheel is an artifact of that explosion. 

Q. Did work crews find an unexploded shell of some type?

A. We had UXO team from a company named Tetra Tech on site at all times. They did an amazing job of doing the initial recovery and establishing safety protocols.  When fused ordnance was recovered they implemented protocols to render the ordnance safe for removal then transferred the ordnance for off-site disposal.

Q. Were you there for most or all of the archaeological work? Was it also done by Dominion Energy contractors? 

A. We were contracted through Dominion Energy. They have been great advocates for recovering and preserving these artifacts since the archaeological work for this project began years ago.

(Archaeological work at left. Photo courtesy of Sean Norris, TRC, 2023.)

Q. Will these items go to the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum? If so when?

A. Artifacts are undergoing analysis and the conservation process. It will likely be 18 months to two years before they are ready for display at the Relic Room. (The Picket has reached out to the museum for comment.)

The wagon wheel is currently submerged in a conservation tank at the Confederate Relic Room. The wood spokes started decaying as soon as it was removed from the water and exposed to oxygen. 

A view of the work over the summer (SC Dept. of Health and Environmental Control)

Q. Any particular moments of discovery that stand out to you, especially ones in which you were a part?

A. Lifting the 10-inch cannonballs was a highlight. Holding these artifacts and realizing that almost 160 years ago the place I was standing was a literal war zone was a sobering moment.

Related: Was this wagon wheel shattered in explosion as Sherman's troops took S.C. capital? Experts hope to learn more when they conserve hundreds of artifacts. Read more

Home destroyed in fire at Stone Mountain Park was built for man who served in Confederate cavalry. Officials have ruled out arson

Center of the home goes up in flames (Stone Mtn Park Dept. of Public Safety)

(Updated Nov. 18) -- A Confederate colonel's lavish manor home, which a century later became the centerpiece of a recreated antebellum plantation at Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta, went up in flames early Tuesday .

“It appears at this point to be a total loss. The fire was concentrated in the center and upper portions of the home,” John Bankhead, park police spokesman, told the Picket in an email.

Bankhead said in an email two days later that tests on fire debris and other evidence collected at the Davis-Dickey house led the state fire marshal's office to determine "that an electrical fault in conduit near the entrance to the home was the cause of the fire and not arson."

The Davis-Dickey home is among a collection of relocated antebellum structures in the park’s Historic Square. The residence was built in the community of Dickey, west of Albany, Ga., for the family of Charles Milton Davis, who left Aiken, S.C., in 1850.

The house -- which won praise for its architecture and antiques -- faces the park's famous Confederate memorial carving at Stone Mountain Park and has been the object of critics who believe the complex and some other park features send the wrong message in today's world.

The home was completed in about 1856. Davis, a cotton planter, was the third-largest slaveholder in Calhoun County with 78 enslaved persons. He owned about 3,500 acres, according to census records. Charles and his wife Agnes lived there with seven children.

Davis served as a colonel in the Calhoun County cavalry. Other websites indicated he served as well in the 12^th Battalion Georgia Cavalry and the 10^th Georgia State Troops. All of the units appeared to be stationed in Georgia.

A marker outside the 14-room home says the colonel was made to sign the oath of allegiance to the United States after the war. The family moved to Apopka, Fla., in the 1870s and raised oranges. Davis died in 1902 at age 79.

Stone Mountain rises behind the home before the fire (Jason Armstrong, HMdb.org)

The residence remained in the family until it was moved to Stone Mountain Park in 1961 to be the centerpiece of the attraction.

The home was in poor condition when it traveled 200 miles, according to the Society of Architectural Historians.

After it was restored and filled with original and period furnishings, the residence opened to Stone Mountain Park visitors in 1963 as a largely privately operated venture. A visit to the park this week shows the complex to be showing its age. 

It was considered the "big house" at the complex, which included other homes, outbuildings and two slave dwellings. The area was promoted as both history and entertainment and actress Butterfly McQueen, featured in the film "Gone With the Wind," was hired to appear at the plantation site. She left the park in 1965.

A tarp covers the home and a fence was erected (Picket photo)

Stone Mountain Park's website says: Each structure was moved from its original site and carefully restored to preserve its authenticity and historical value. Take a self-guided tour and enjoy the sights and smells of the working cookhouse and garden. This fascinating area also houses the most extensive collection of period furniture and decorations in the south, reflecting the diverse lifestyles of 18th and 19th century Georgia residents."

It says the home is “an excellent example of neoclassical architecture.”

Stone Mountain Park in recent years has been under pressure to remove features, street names or exhibits that depict what critics and scholars call symbols of the Lost Cause and white supremacy. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association has pledged to make changes, but some say the pace has been too slow. The park this year relocated four Confederate flags that were next to a popular trail.

Road to Historic Square was closed for a few days (Picket photo)

Scholars and historians say the attraction tried to approximate Tara, while minimizing the horrors of slavery.

Gordon Jones, senior military historian at the Atlanta History Center, 25 years ago said: “In short, the Stone Mountain Park which emerged in the 1960s comprised a comical orgy of Lost Cause, Old South, and even Western movie clichés, clearly removed from the more serious and hateful Ku Klux Klan past, but also clearly rooted in it.”

Architectural historian Lydia Mattice Brandt and associate professor of history Philip Mills Herrington, writing in the March 2022 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, detailed the history, timeline and goals of the antebellum plantation now known as Historic Square.

They write that the plantation complex buttressed Georgia’s resistance to desegregation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it was mixture of fact and fantasy.

“That seeming authenticity coincided with the well-worn tropes of Lost Cause storytelling, marginalizing the history of slavery and the enslaved while depicting White consumption as virtuous and White pleasure as paramount. The plantation, past and present, was an amusement park.”

The authors suggest a reinterpretation of the square is critically important. (Click photo at left for a rendering of Historic Square.)

“The site provides an exceptional opportunity for visitors to question how their own experiences, education, consumption, and assumptions also perpetuate the Old South myth.”

The Picket reached out to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association for comment on the current role and possible future of Historic Square, which remained closed after the fire.

It's too early to say what might happen to what's left of the Davis-Dickey residence.

Even though the structure suffered extensive fire and water damage, it’s possible some belongings can be saved. As for the possibility of rebuilding, Bankhead said: “Not sure at this point. The left and right sides were not as damaged, but the center is destroyed.”

New marker on Hilton Head Island pays tribute to Black regiment that helped build Fort Howell to protect freedmen

Marker is unveiled at Fort Howell entrance (town of Hilton Head Island)

A new marker on Hilton Head Island, SC., highlights the role of the 32^nd U.S. Colored Infantry in the construction of Fort Howell, built to defend Mitchelville, a village populated by formerly enslaved people during the Civil War.

“This is a great day for Hilton Head Island because it shines a light on a piece of our past that needed to be explained more in depth and needed to be spotlighted properly,” Mayor Alan Perry said in prepared remarks for Wednesday’s ceremony at the well-preserved site. 

Much of coastal South Carolina fells into Union hands relatively early in the war and the Federal army needed to create camps for tens of thousands of newly freed families.

Mitchelville was the first such community in the area. (At left, a photo at Fort Howell of a metal figure depicting a 32nd USCT sergeant, courtesy of Hilton Head Island Land Trust)

While a previous sign at the well-preserved Fort Howell declared the earthen fortification's purpose and for whom it was named, the new marker lists the 32^nd USCT and the 144^th New York infantry as its builders in the latter half of 1864.

The army wanted to thwart any Confederate raids on Mitchelville. A large military encampment called Camp Baird was built near the fort.

The town worked with the Hilton Head Island Land Trust, which owns and maintains the site, and the South Carolina Department of Archives and History to create the new marker. 

George Banino, president of the land trust’s board, told the Picket the marker was changed in response to comments, especially the Gullah community, about telling the human story. 

“As the location of the U.S. headquarters for the Union's Department of the South from six months after the start of the war until a year after the end of the war, Hilton Head Island has an important history to tell,” Banino said.  

Bridge at entrance crosses remains of moat (Wikipedia photo)

Perry said the new marker "conveys a single cohesive narrative of our history."

The Picket also reached out to Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park for comment.

Historical records show 500 officers and men from the 32nd USCT worked a few months to create the 3-acre Fort Howell. It was designed to be manned by artillerymen and as many as 27 large weapons, according to a news release from the town.

New marker at left replaced one at right. (Town of Hilton Head and Mike Sroud, HMdb.org)

USCT members faced discrimination within the U.S. Army and were not recognized as soldiers by the Confederacy, which threatened to execute or return them to slavery.

More than 180,000 men served in the USCT, about 10% of all Federal soldiers. More than 40,000 died of combat, illness and disease.

The post is named for Union Brig. Gen. Joshua B. Howell, who died in September 1864 after falling from his horse in Virginia.

Plan for the five-sided Fort Howell (National Archives)

Though Fort Howell never saw action, it is significant for its design and its structural integrity. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, according to the Historical Marker Database. 

“The fort, an essentially pentagonal enclosure constructed of built-up earth, is quite discernible despite natural erosion and the growth of trees and other vegetation,” says HMdb.org.

Fort Howell is the best-preserved earthen Civil War fort in South Carolina, although erosion has taken away some fine features, the trust says.

Rendering of what the fort, surroundings may have looked like
 (Mary Ann Browning Ford for Hilton Head Island Land Trust)

Over the past 10 years or so, the park has been transformed from a site containing some low earthen mounds covered by dense vegetation to a learning center for all visitors, Banino said. Improvements include extensive signage and walking paths.

“A large portion of the vegetation has been removed to enable visitors to view the structure of the fort, although enough vegetation has been retained to provide protection from continued erosion,” he said.

Exterior wall of fort across from moat (Hilton Head Island Land Trust)

Fort Howell, at 160 Beach City Road near the island’s airport, is open to the public with adjacent areas for parking. It has several interpretive signs and metal figures represent soldiers and others. It is open from dawn to dusk, according to the trust.

The town says Fort Howell is a key site on the National Park Service's Network to Freedom, which encompasses the Underground Railroad and the Civil War Discovery Trail.

John J. Upham fought in the Civil War and Indian Wars. He and his bride built a charming St. Augustine cottage that is now for sale

(Evan Ulsh photo, courtesy of ONE Sotheby's International Realty)

After 30 years of military service, including fighting in the Civil War and the Indian Wars, Lt. Col. John Jaques Upham was ready for a new adventure -- and a warmer place to spend his winters.

So the bachelor, 54, married Caroline Hoppin Williams – 10 years his junior -- in Milwaukee on Sept. 23, 1891. Having soldiered through bouts of poor health over the years, the U.S. 8^th Cavalry officer retired just four months later.

Besides seeking marital bliss, Upham (right) must have wanted escape from the current cold Wisconsin winter and memories of bone-chilling blizzards on the Great Plains while he rode horses or shivered in a fort.

He and Mrs. Upham decided to build a winter retreat on St. George Street in St. Augustine, Fla. The striking cottage went up over the winter of 1892-1893 and the couple happily wintered there and summered in Wisconsin until 1898, when Upham died of kidney disease at a Milwaukee hotel where they were staying before their return south. He was 61.

Today, the house, which has had numerous additions and owners over the years, is for sale, currently at $1.3 million. Upham Cottage, with eight bedrooms and 5,800 square feet, is part of the St. Augustine historic district, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; the National Park Service says the three-story cottage is one of a few remaining of that style in the city.

“This remarkable home showcases the graceful blend of Queen Anne Victorian architecture with extraordinary examples of Moorish Revival in the courtyard arches,” says the listing by Kate Mitchell and Elizabeth Jennings of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, St. Augustine.

(Evan Ulsh photos for ONE Sotheby's International Realty)

“From its stunning original millwork and wood floors to its unique octagonal shape, this home will take you back to the splendor of the Gilded Age.” Photos of the property, which is just blocks from the water, show a welcoming home still steeped in the Victorian era.

The likes of novelist Henry James and painter Martin Johnson Heade paid visits more than a century ago. “Over time, the cottage evolved along with the ever-changing tides of history. The original owners continuously added onto the property, building a ballroom, rooftop garden and atrium,” the listing states.

The Upham Cottage later became a multi-family property until it was converted back to a single-family dwelling in the late 1980s, and it is a different cat than its neighbors. Its sales price has varied widely in the past 15 or so years, according to Zillow. Like other houses of that age with such features, upkeep is paramount.

(Evan Ulsh photo, courtesy of ONE Sotheby's International Realty)

“Today, as you step foot within these storied walls, you become an integral part of the Upham Winter Cottage's narrative. Embrace the opportunity to restore its grandeur and assume the role of its guardian, preserving the heritage of the past while crafting a new chapter in its history,” says the listing.

Upham battled health issues along with the enemy

John J. Upham was born in Wilmington, Del., in 1837. His family moved to Milwaukee, where his father, Don A.J. Upham, served as mayor in 1849 and 1850. The younger Upham attended West Point, graduated in 1859 and joined the regular army.

First in the infantry, the officer was stationed at Governor’s Island, N.Y., and California before the Civil War broke out.

Arched entrance at the cottage in St. Augustine (Evan Ulsh photo)

He was engaged in the defense of Washington, D.C., the 1862 Peninsula Campaign in Virginia and the Battle of Gettysburg, where he was promoted to brevet major for “gallant and meritorious service,” according to his The Milwaukee Sentinel obituary (provided to the Picket by the Wisconsin Historical Society). He later became a disbursing officer in the North and occupied South.

Cullum’s Register, an index of graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, had a biography of Upham, listing numerous stations in the West during the Indian Wars, after he had switched to the cavalry. The officer took several leaves of absence, at least some for health reasons. The register said he served “despite constant poor health.” (At left, photo of Upham while cadet, courtesy of U.S. Military Academy Library)

Upham was in a few regiments in his time in Texas, Kansas and Indian Territory. He took command of Oklahoma’s Fort Gibson in 1875 and was in the field in the summer of 1876 as part of the Yellowstone and Big Horn expeditions (George A. Armstrong and much of his command were killed at Little Big Horn in June 1876).

Upham fought at War Bonnet Creek and Slim Buttes and later was stationed at Fort D.A. Russell, Fort Wahaskie and Fort Niobrara, according to his obituary.

Man holds rifle as two others ride off (Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)

The Wisconsin Historical Society has 12 drawings made by a Native American on blank pages of discarded ledger books that once belonged to an Indian agent. Upham acquired the sketches done in pencil, wax, crayon and earth colors by a Plains Indian, about 1880-1890.

'Distinguished son of a distinguished sire'

Upham’s later service included time at Fort Leavenworth and brief deployments to Turkey and France as a military observer. “He was at that time decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, a distinction enjoyed by few Americans,” according to his obituary.

Upham was promoted to colonel on Jan. 14, 1892, and put on the retired list on Jan. 30, 1892.

The retired officer was a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, a Civil War officers group. He was invited to the May 30, 1897, unveiling of the Battle Monument of the regular army at West Point (Wikipedia photo, at left).

The Uphams shared seven years together and they returned to Milwaukee in spring 1898. But John never saw Florida again. He died on Oct. 21 and was buried at Forest Home Cemetery. Caroline died in 1934. They had no children.

Upham’s lengthy obituary, which called him one of Wisconsin’s best-known military men, included these remarks made by a friend:

“Milwaukee has lost the distinguished son of a distinguished sire. Large of frame and equally large of heart; generous; genial; unassuming; unselfish; this endeared him to all who had the privilege of his close friendship. On the pages of our country’s military history one may read the record of the deeds that won for him promotion and popularity, but from his own modest lips one never heard mention of his gallant and meritorious conduct.”