In the 'things I did not know department but learned at a museum': Likeness of famous Civil War eagle Old Abe was used as logo on Case farming threshers

Tour guide Oro Ball, closeup of eagle logo (Picket photos) and the real Old Abe in 1870s

After an embarrassingly long time without having paid a visit, I traveled with a church group Thursday to the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Ga. It did not disappoint: Inside and outside are an amazing array of railroad engines, boxcars, cabooses, schedule boards, crew uniforms and much more. We even took a short train ride on a side track.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a collection of commercial and transit buses toward the back.

But what really got my attention near that area was a 1906 Case traction steam engine with a bald eagle embossed on its boiler. 

Tour guide Oro Ball explained the logo depicted Old Abe from the Civil War. I instantly thought of the 8^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, which carried the mascot in three dozen battles and skirmishes, including Vicksburg and Corinth, Ms., according to tradition and records.

Honestly, I had no idea Old Abe was the logo of J.I. Case and Company for nearly 75 years and was a fixture on farm equipment across the country.

Old Abe was just weeks old in 1861 when a Chippewa Indian took him from a nest in northern Wisconsin. The bird was subsequently traded to an individual and it ended up with Company C of the Eau Claire Badgers, which later became part of the 8^th Wisconsin.

This was about the time Jerome Increase Case, a native of New York, was in Eau Claire on business.

“Company C was on parade, and the eagle’s cry could be heard over the drums. Mr. Case asked a boy where the bird had come from, and he told him Old Abe’s story. Case immediately determined to make Old Abe his business trademark as soon as the war was over,” according to an article in The Post-Journal in Jamestown, N.Y.

(Civil War Picket photo)

Old Abe quickly became a darling of Union troops in the field, who saw his as a symbol of freedom and bravery.

“A perch was built for him of shield shape, with the stars and stripes painted thereon, to which he is attached by a small rope, giving him liberty of his limbs and wings for a distance of several yards,” says the Wisconsin Historical Society. “He became an inspirational symbol to the troops, akin to a ceremonial flag carried by each regiment.”

Col. Rufus Dawes of the Iron Brigade recalled, "Our eagle usually accompanied us on the bloody field, and I heard [Confederate] prisoners say they would have given more to capture the eagle of the Eighth Wisconsin, than to take a whole brigade of men."

After the war, Old Abe lived in the state Capitol and was used for fund-raising efforts. He died in 1881 from smoke inhalation after a fire.

Click to read sign about Old Abe (Picket photo), at right, J.I. Case

As for Case, he got his big start in Racine, Wis., in the early 1840s and he produced threshers and his first steam engine tractor in 1869. Old Abe was adopted as the company trademark in 1865, at war’s end, and it was in use until 1969.

Over time, a globe replaced a branch in Abe's claws and cast iron eagle statues were placed in buildings where Case did business.

The steam engine on display in Duluth is a Case 110 model made in 1906. This was an early form of what would become a tractor. A version in the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Canada says they were designed for “heavy plowing, threshing and freighting – for all kinds of work necessitating a large amount of horsepower.”

The farm equipment company is known today as Case IH.

And now I know the rest of the story.

Wreath is placed in Pickett's Mill ravine where a US flag finial was found. Hundreds of Union soldiers died nearby in artillery slaughter

An honor guard Saturday above a ravine where flag finial was found (Picket photo)

On a gorgeous late spring day, about 40 people and I walked single file down a trail in Paulding County, Ga. Sun pored through the trees as we made a gentle descent, a deep and breathtaking ravine to our right.

This might have been on any other morning a carefree trek away from worry and traffic congestion in metro Atlanta. But Saturday was no normal day – it was the 159^th anniversary of the Civil War’s Battle of Pickett’s Mill. And hundreds of Union soldiers died in that ravine on May 27, 1864.

A few minutes earlier, at the Pickett's Mill park museum, visitors got an overview of the slaughter. We then set out for a wreath-laying ceremony at the spot where a finial, the top of a U.S. flag carried in the battle, was found in 1963 at the bottom of the ravine. The flag topper, which sits in a case in the visitor center, was the star of the program Saturday. It's the first new exhibit at the park in years, staffers said.

**Photo gallery of Saturday's events at Pickett's Mill**

John Hoomes, curator preservationist and interpretive ranger at Pickett’s Mill Battlefield, said the scene must have been horrific as canister from two Confederate artillery pieces tore into the Federal soldiers who climbed the ravine in the second futile attack. Several color bearers, who were defenseless, were shot down.

Each regiment in the Union army had two sets of colors, one the U.S. flag and the other a regimental flag. These banners were sacred -- a point of pride and a means of leading and rallying men amid the chaos of combat.

The enemy always shot at color bearers and tried to seize flags. The Pickett's Mill finial is believed to have been put on an American flag.

The finial at Pickett's Mill likely belonged to an Ohio or Indiana regiment.

“As you walk down entering the ravine, you are entering the deadliest part of the battlefield,” Hoomes said.

My photos can’t begin to show just how deep the ravine is and the height those unfortunate men in Col. William H. Gibson’s brigade had to scale. The wreath was placed near the bottom of the ravine and a creek. I felt it was too steep for my knees and ankles, so I did not venture that far down. (At right, local historian Michael Hitt points to the Federals' objective.)

After the ceremony, we walked back up to the approximate location of where two Confederate cannons rained hell down the ravine in 1864. One of them, a bronze 12-pounder howitzer that was part of Confederate Capt. Thomas Key’s battery, is on display in the visitor center (see above). The original 780-pound barrel sits on a reproduction carriage.

The howitzer was cast in Boston by Cyrus Alger & Co. in 1851 for the Arkansas Military Institute. The number 9 is stamped on its muzzle face and the cannon is marked with an eagle and globe.

Capt. Key and his Arkansas four-gun battery played a large part in the Confederate victory. Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne ordered Key to place two guns to the right oblique to enfilade a ravine.

Federal troops under Maj. Gen. William Hazen and Gibson charged uphill in their futile attempt to take the top of a ridge. Key’s howitzers were ready for them.

“They shot solid shot and canister. And that was 48 balls per (canister) round,” Stephen Briggs, then interim director at Pickett’s Mill, told me in 2016. The battery fired 182 rounds of spherical case and canister in two hours, he said.

Crew prepares to fire reproduction howitzer on Saturday (Picket photo)

The Federal army suffered 1,600 casualties at the battle, compared to 500 for the South. The advance on Atlanta was delayed about a week. 

On Saturday, a reenactor artillery crew was firing blanks. Key’s Battery, associated with the Friends of Pickett’s Mill Battlefield, drilled and fired a reproduction cannon as park visitors held fingers to their ears. Activities elsewhere in the park included musket firing and a demonstration of camp life.

Tommy Carter with the finial he pulled from the ground (Picket photo)

The finial is in the visitor center museum. An interpretive panel had not arrived by Saturday but should be put up soon. For years, the finial was on a trophy stand and used as a book weight in the park library. Until last year, it was thought to possibly be a reproduction, but experts are now saying it is genuine.

Tommy Carter (above) of New Hope, Ga., was reunited with the finial for the first time since he and a cousin dug it up in the ravine in 1963. (It’s important to note that this was private property at the time, about 10 years before the state began acquiring land for the park and later prohibited such activity.)

The original Key's Battery cannon is only a few feet away from the finial exhibit. “That could be the cannon that hit that finial three times,” said Hoomes.

Replaced Civil War marker in Smithfield, Va., recalls a ham-fisted Federal foray in 1864 that was all sizzle, but no steak

If you’re a believer in the adage “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” look no farther for an example than a Civil War skirmish that occurred in Smithfield, Va., best known for its famous hams.

But this debacle has nothing to do with pork. Rather, it was a foray of Union troops trying to stop Confederate harassment of naval ships. The brief mission failed, resulting in the capture of about 100 men, the loss of a Federal gunboat and the taking of a war trophy that rubbed salt in the wound.

Visitors to the Isle of Wight County Museum can learn about the Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 1864, clash. Just outside is a new Civil War Trails sign replacing a marker damaged several years ago by a truck.

The text was revised for the new sign (above, courtesy of Isle of Wight County Museum), officials told the Picket.

“Relocated from its former spot on Church Street, this sign brings more attention to the events which happened right here on Main Street in 1864,” museum director Jennifer England said in a press release.

The museum displays a model of the doomed Federal army gunboat Smith Briggs and a distinguished gilded eagle wrested from the vessel after capture and before its destruction.

Guilded eagle plundered from the Smith Briggs (Isle of Wight County Museum)

For months, federal transports and war vessels had been operating with impunity in the James and Nansemond  rivers despite Rebel harassment. The Yanks wanted to put an end to the firing on shipping and decided to land troops in Smithfield and have a separate detachment join the attack from Chuckatuck (Suffolk), to the southeast.

On Jan. 31, 1864, about 90 troops from the 99^th New York Infantry and other regiments were transported via Pagan River to the unoccupied Smithfield, across from Newport News.

Union Capt. James Lee led his men south from Smithfield toward Chuckatuck, but ran into stiff opposition from local Confederate troops. The troops who landed at Chuckatuck heard distant firing, saw no enemy and decided to return to where they landed.

Things weren’t going well for their comrades in blue near Smithfield.

Model of the federal gunboat Smith Briggs at Isle of Wight County Museum

“Outmatched, Lee fell back on Smithfield, pulling items from stores along this street to throw up barricades in the hopes of stalling the Confederates,” the sign says. The Union troops were desperate for rescue.

The Smith Briggs returned the next day to save the harried Federal troops, but things went south, so to speak.

Confederate artillery caused the vessel to run aground, leading to its capture and looting. The trapped New Yorkers and others were forced to surrender. (Most were shipped to Andersonville prison in Georgia.)

The late local historian Segar “Sig” Dashiell, who wrote numerous newspaper articles about the history of Smithfield and other towns, wrote of the demise of the Smith-Briggs:

“When the Yankees had been removed, the citizens who had congregated on the wharf were allowed to come aboard the Smith Briggs and carry off anything they wanted. She was equipped with fine-cut glass with the name of the vessel cut on each piece and considerable supplies of tea, coffee and other goods… (Sgt. Joseph) Norsworthy climbed to the top of the pilot house and wrung and twisted from its bracket the handsome carved and gilded eagle that adorned the vessel and brought it ashore…A boy was sent around town to warn every householder to open all windows, as the gunboat was about to be blown up.”   

The Smithfield marker is one of four Civil War Trails markers in the county used to boost tourism. The nonprofit Civil War Trails is based in Virginia and has markers in six states.

By the way, there's a webcam in the museum for what's called the "world's oldest ham."

The Isle of Wight County Museum will host its next lecture and guided tour about the 1864 Battle of Smithfield at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22. A short ribbon-cutting event will take place during that lecture.