'Confederate Odyssey': Atlanta exhibit's rare artifacts, guns give insight to war effort

Patent for Morse breech-loading firearm (Atlanta History Center)

George W. Wray Jr. apparently had a photographic memory: He could remember in vivid detail what he had seen and read.

That attribute helped set him apart while attending Civil War gun and relic shows. Everyone watched Wray as he walked the aisles and spoke with dealers.

The other buyers shared one thought, said Gordon L. Jones, senior military historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center.

“’He must know something we don’t know.’”

George W. Wray Jr.

What Wray, an Atlanta businessman, must have known was how to build a singular collection of some of the rarest  Confederate firearms, swords, uniforms, flags and other items, according to Jones. Some were one of a kind.

The history center’s signature exhibit, “Turning Point: The American Civil War,” has at its heart the DuBose collection, which drew from Federal and Confederate artifacts, with the former in higher numbers.

“George Wray set out, on the other hand, to just collect Confederate-made or used materials,” said Jones. “All of them have a Confederate association.”

“It is a perfect complement to the DuBose collection,” said Jones.

After much anticipation and preparation, “Confederate Odyssey: The George W. Wray Jr. Civil War Collection,” goes on exhibit at the AHC this Friday, timed to coincide with events marking the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Peachtree Creek in north Atlanta. The exhibit will run through March 15, 2015.

The central theme of “Confederate Odyssey” is the attempt by a slave-based society to fight an industrial war. “Every piece we have is a piece of evidence of how they were or were not able to do that,” Jones said in an interview while he was preparing a sword for the exhibit.

Some of the Wray artifacts (AHC)

About 200 items from the extensive Wray collection will tell that story.

“Some people will swoon over an item because it belonged to a famous person,” said Charlie Crawford, president of the Georgia Battlefields Association. “The Wray Collection is more about showing the everyday items of privates and relative unknowns, thus giving a viewer more of an idea of what life was like for the great majority of people who participated.”

Visitors will see where the Confederacy successfully adapted to modern warfare. They also will see some failures or limitations: poorly crafted bayonets or makeshift clothing.

“On one hand, it is very creative,” said Jones. “On the other, it is making due.”

The Confederacy was hampered by short supplies of materials, skilled labor and interchangeable parts.

Gordon Jones

The story of George Morse, a New Hampshire gunmaker who set up shop in Greenville, S.C., during the Civil War, typifies the challenges, said Jones.

The exhibit has a Morse patent model for an innovative breech-loading firearm.

The gunmaker altered U.S. Army muzzle loaders, but was only able to make about 1,000 carbines, and they were restricted to South Carolina troops.

“He made a terrible professional move by going to the South,” said Jones. “The capacity to muster the raw materials to Greenville over a single railroad and to make it work profitably… they couldn’t make the quantity to make a difference.”

The exhibit includes two Morse firearms made for the U.S. government and four for the Confederacy.

Southern manufacturers struggled to make firearms that could stand up to extensive wear and campaigns.

“Would a Southern-made gun kill you the same as a Northern one?” Jones said. “Yes. But would it last as long on the battlefield? No.”

(Texas rifle, AHC)

The constant challenge was making them en masse without a lot of raw materials. The show includes a Texas contract rifle (above) made by a private company.

“This has a thick heavy barrel with tiny iron bands,” said the curator. “It is poorly balanced and the back action lock is weak.”

One officer said, according to Jones, “’These things are more dangerous to my men than the enemy.’”

(Alexander carbine, AHC)

A breech-loading Alexander carbine was made by a maker who was granted workspace at the Richmond, Va., armory but absconded with the prototype and tried in vain to win a lucrative contact.

Collectors and historians knew the gun (above) existed, but Wray found the patent model listed in a weapons publication in 1981 and recognized its value, said Jones.

There were some successful adaptations, and small manufacturers around the South made decent weapons, albeit in limited numbers. The Confederacy was able to get 500,000 rifled muskets from Europe through the onerous Union blockade. “That is how the Confederacy survived,” said Jones.

The AHC said the exhibit provides poignant stories of bravery, resourcefulness and sacrifice during the four-year war.

Bloodied frock coat worn by soldier, 17

Jones points to a frock coat worn by Benjamin Schumpert, a 17-year-old Georgia soldier who fell at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. It is an unusual garment make from homespun cotton ticking.

“He lied about his age to get in there. He is shot in the head and you see the garment he was wearing is stained with his blood. He is an American soldier who gave everything he had for this cause,” said Jones. “When you see that blood -- that is not an experience you see in a movie and the Internet. You can only have this at a museum, (by) looking at the actual artifact. That is a hell of a thing.”

Jones said Wray, who died in 2004, was a private man who invited him to lunch in December 2001. 

“He came to us with this wonderful collection,” the result of travel and thorough research.

The center acquired the collection in 2005. While Jones would not divulge the price of the investment, he said, “This is the largest collection purchase the AHC has ever made. It was not something we did lightly.”

Weapons are placed in "Confederate Odyssey" exhibit (AHC)

The University of Georgia Press is publishing a 450-page companion book-catalog, “Confederacy Odyssey,” with a list price of $49.95. Available for pre-order, the book is due to come out in mid-October.

About 900 color photographs by Jack W. Melton Jr. will include detail shots of the interior details and marks on weapons, showing both quality and shortcomings. Jones researched and wrote the text for the book.

His work on the DuBose and Wray collections rank at the top of his accomplishments while at the Atlanta History Center, Jones said.

Even after the Wray exhibit ends, “this collection will always be here.”

Battle flag for 33rd Texas Cavalry (AHC)

The curator hopes visitors will appreciate the fact Confederate soldiers were willing to die for their cause.

As for the performance by the Southern governments, businesses and industry? Jones gives them an “A” for effort, but an “F” for ultimately failing.

“The whole economic system in the South was just not suited for the demands that would be placed on it,” said Jones, adding Confederate leaders expected the war to be over quickly. “They knew of Northern industrial capacity. In a short war, that difference will not be decisive. That difference did turn out to be decisive.”

Pennsylvania township remembers horrific train collision that killed prisoners, guards

Marker at national cemetery in Elmira, N.Y., lists Confederates killed in collision.

The men in the first car behind the locomotive never had a chance.

On July 15, 1864, an 18-car train carrying 833 Confederates prisoners and 128 Union guards collided with a coal train about 1.5 miles outside the small town of Shohola, Pa.

The noise and chaos of the head-on wreck brought townspeople and farmers to the rocky site. Folks across the Delaware River in Barryville, New York, also rushed to assist the injured.

“The smoke and debris cleared to reveal a grim spectacle. Both locomotives were elevated high against each other, and cars down the line were crushed, overturned, ripped in half, or on top of each other,” wrote Michael Gray in his book, “The Business of Captivity,” an account of the Federal prison in Elmira, N.Y., the destination of the prisoner train.

Caboose used by historical society (Discover Pike PA)

“All but one man in the first car perished, thrown clear before the impact smashed the car to a length less than six feet,” wrote Gray.

Although the exact number is not known, about 48 prisoners and 17 guards died. The bodies, many disfigured, were buried in a trench along the Erie Railroad. They were exhumed and moved in 1911 to Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira.

This Saturday (July 12), the Shohola Railroad & Historical Society is marking the 150^th anniversary of the calamity with living history events, including Civil War re-enactors, a man who portrays President Abraham Lincoln and Ruth Randone’s one-woman show, “A Confederate Soldier’s Tale,” based on the train wreck.

An opening ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. and a shuttle service will take visitors to the park just outside of the village.

Five Rebels are believed to have escaped after the train wreck. An event Saturday will be “a search and apprehension of escaped Confederate prisoners,” said Martha Shadler, president of the society.

(Courtesy of Discover Pike PA)

A memorial service at 1 p.m. Sunday at the site of the Old Congregational Church in Barryville will remember the victims. Two Confederate brothers who died of their injuries are buried in a cemetery there.

A field trip to the 1864 crash site, now on private property, will follow.

Events at a park in the scenic Pocono Mountains community of Shohola are free; a ham dinner at 5 p.m. Saturday costs $10 for adults and $5 for children.

The doomed train was carrying prisoners from Point Lookout, Md., to Elmira. The collision occurred near one of a series of blind bends.

“There was a lot of terrible scalding from the hot water and the steam engines,” said Shadler. Residents in the area helped tend to about 100 injured passengers.

Shohola train station in later years (Library of Congress)

A jury found that a dispatcher, who vanished a day after the wreck, mistakenly had allowed the eastbound coal train on the track.

Woodlawn National Cemetery also holds the graves of nearly 3,000 Confederate soldiers who died at the Elmira prison are buried. People from the South occasionally stop by to look for graves of their ancestors. 

A monument at the cemetery lists the Shohola train wreck dead. Fittingly, the side with Confederate names faces the south; the marker listing Union soldiers faces the north.

Shadler said members of the 124^th New York State Volunteers, 1^st New Jersey Battery A and the 141^st Pennsylvania Infantry are among re-enactors expected to attend the weekend events.

(Courtesy of Woodlawn National Cemetery)

(Courtesy of Woodlawn National Cemetery)

“They will be camped out tonight (Friday) probably to Sunday. They will show how they lived, cooked and ate. They are setting up a Civil War-era hospital.” Another group will fire artillery.

The township of Shohola and Barryville are about 70 miles from New York City. The area is known for its pretty lakes and rivers and offers second homes for residents of NYC, New Jersey and Philadelphia, said real estate agent Bridget Gelderman.

Shadler hopes people will learn about local history, which includes mills and the Delaware and Hudson Canal. And don’t forget to look at what nature offers.

“It’s just a beautiful area.”

For more information about the event, call 570-296-2304.

Historian 'pieces together' an Illinois soldier's story that ended in attack at Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia

Charlotte Reid and daughter Katy Johnson at Kennesaw

Charlotte Reid and her sister, Twilla Zellman, began their journey of discovery with a last name, a little family history and a cannonball tucked away in a bedroom dresser. 

Through research, they attached a first name with the last name of an ancestor who fought and died during the Civil War: Pvt. John G. Wilson of Potomac, Ill.

From there, the sisters, with the help of Reid’s daughter and an historian in the Atlanta area, have reconstructed a young life lost at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia.

The family’s journey came to an emotional apex on the evening of June 28, 150 years and one day after the battle.

More than 3,100 memorial luminaries flickered during a sesquicentennial ceremony at the battlefield. One shone for Reid’s great-grandfather, mortally wounded in a desperate, failed attack on strong Confederate defenses on Cheatham Hill.

John G. Wilson grave at Marietta National Cemetery

“We turned around (to see the luminaries) and I had no words,” Reid recalled last week. “Tears were going to flow if I did not get my Kleenex out. It was overwhelming.”

Reid, who lives in Modesto, Calif., last month made her fourth visit to Kennesaw in five years. Joining her was daughter Katy Johnson, of Franklin, Tenn.

They met up again with Brad Quinlin, a Civil War author and historian, who took a call from mother and daughter in 2009 while volunteering at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

Quinlin has filled in holes in the service and last days of Pvt. Wilson:

-- Wilson was buried at Marietta National Cemetery near Kennesaw, rather than in Chattanooga, Tenn. The family had thought the soldier was buried in Chattanooga and checked there first. “Mom was pretty much speechless when we first found his grave,” said Johnson.

-- The 125^th Illinois Infantry, Company I, soldier was shot in the gut on June 27, 1864, and died two days later at a tent hospital in Big Shanty, as the nearby town of Kennesaw was then known.

-- Wilson and 61 others Union soldiers were buried in a peach orchard behind the hospital. His remains, likely marked by a wooden headboard, were moved to Marietta National Cemetery on April 27, 1867. 

Brad Quinlin and Charlotte Reid at battlefield

Reid said Wilson’s wife, Mary Melissa Copeland Wilson, and a young daughter died just before the war. The soldier, who enlisted in September 1862, left a 2- or 3-year-old son in care of his wife’s parents while he went off to fight. There are no known surviving photographs of Wilson, thought to be about 28 when he was killed.

“He went anyway because her parents were going to raise the boy and President Lincoln made a real push to get a large number of men to enlist from Illinois,” said Reid. 

Reid’s mother came to live with her in California about 15 years ago. Reid and Twilla discovered two objects in a dresser. One proved to be a round rock, the other a small cannonball.

Reid theorizes that Wilson brought the cannonball home to his boy as a souvenir while he was on a medical furlough in Kentucky.

Wilson was buried in peach orchard that is now a lawn.

The three women traveled to Marietta in September 2009 and spent the full day with Quinlin, who showed them where Wilson camped and fought on the Kennesaw Mountain battlefield. They also got to see the hospital site, now a vacant parcel, and made a return visit to the national cemetery and the grave.

“It was interesting to … walk on the soil he was on,” Johnson said. “You didn’t know you were missing something until someone informed you.”

“Brad was the one who put all the pieces of the story together so far,” said Reid.

Quinlin, who was volunteered at the battlefield for 27 years, said the day “was very emotional” for the women.

“All day, we took the journey of John Wilson from where he camped June 21 to June 26 … down to the Cheatham Hill site, where we talked about the attack of (Brig. Gen. Dan) McCook’s men.”

The historian pulled regimental books, Union hospital records and pension and muster records kept at the National Archives. The 125^th Illinois saw service in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.

Hospital once sat on what is now a vacant lot.

The regiment was right in the thick of things during the fruitless June 27 assault on the “Dead Angle” at Cheatham Hill.

“They came up right where the Illinois Monument is,” said Quinlin.

Having done extensive research at Marietta National Cemetery, Quinlin knew that Section J contained graves from men buried near a spring and Camp McDonald in Big Shanty.

Books at the National Archives gave the hospital’s location and accommodations. “That hospital had no main building; it was just made up of tents.”

Wilson and other wounded soldiers were first treated at a field hospital on what is now Cheatham Hill Road. “Once they were stabilized, they were taken to this hospital at Big Shanty.” 

Quinlin said he is allowed to pull National Archives muster rolls down to the company level. 

The records included notations on Wilson’s wounding and death two days later.

Twilla Zellman, Brad Quinlin and Charlotte Reid at the gravesite.

“It was very personal to these sergeants. These were their friends.” Quinlin said of the records. “The sergeant wrote down, “'Comrade John G. Wilson, stomach wound.’”

The author considers Union Chaplain Thomas B. Van Horne a hero for his development of Federal cemeteries in Chattanooga and Marietta. Van Horne, of the 13^th Ohio, was tapped to recover the remains of Union soldiers who died in the Atlanta Campaign.

The chaplain was known to go to every grave, kneel down, recite a prayer and document everything that was found with a soldier’s remains, said Quinlin, whose great-grandfather, John James of the 93^rd Indiana, is buried in an unmarked grave at Vicksburg, Ms.

Van Horne kept hospital records for the 62 soldiers buried behind the Big Shanty hospital.

Quinlin said he has identified 49 Marietta National Cemetery graves, previously marked as unknown, in his extensive research of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign.

At his website, Quinlin offers battlefield and cemetery tours. For $150, he provides a “complete record” of a Union soldier’s service, including regimental and muster information kept at the National Archives. 

“You will know day by day what happened to your soldier. With the regimental records, find out the days they were on guard duty, picket duty, on report and the days they were present on duty or in the hospital,” the site says.

Quinlin said he has done research for about 70 families. Many are more difficult than the Wilson project, he said. “Everything fell in place with everything gathered.”

During the sesquicentennial observance at Kennesaw Mountain, Quinlin spent some time with 42 families who traveled to the battlefield.

Among them were descendants of 125^th Illinois commander Lt. Col. Oscar Harmon, also cut down at Kennesaw Mountain. The family brought Harmon’s uniform, boots and sword to the events. 

A formal ceremony that weekend on Marietta Square included comments from other descendants of men who fought in the war.

“We had this really cool moment when this lady from India walks out and takes the mic from me. She looks at all the descendants and said, ‘I just got to this country, and I had no one who fought and died from this country. I want you to know I am here and know what the word freedom means because of the sacrifice of your ancestors. Thanks to your ancestors I know what freedom means.’”

Charlotte Reid with daughter Katy Johnson

“There was not a dry eye in the place,” said Quinlin.

Charlotte Reid said her quest to learn more about John G. Wilson is not over. She’s interested in the different battle engagements and details of where the 125^th Illinois campaigned for almost two years before Kennesaw Mountain.

Despite the heat, hilly terrain and the use of a cane, Reid, 81, said she was determined to attend the June 28 rededication of the Illinois Monument, not far from where her great-grandfather fell in battle.

Katy Johnson recalled, too, gazing down at the thousands of lighted luminaries.

“It pretty much took your breath away…."

Grant given for Chattanooga preservation

The National Park Service has announced $830,000 in grant money to help preserve more than 48 acres of land from the Civil War's Battle of Chattanooga in November 1863. The grant money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund was announced Wednesday. The NPS called Chattanooga "one of America's threatened Civil War battlefields." • Details

Civil War fashion show: These re-enactors jump through hoops to get it right

“Hollywood has wrecked history.”

With that, Holly Sheen ticked off a litany of fashion faux pas on the screen, including the classic, “Gone With the Wind.”

The bonnets were wrong. The hair was wretched.

There was a bright spot: “Melanie was fabulous.” Scarlett -- not so much.

Sheen, of Greenville, S.C., and a dozen other living historians walked the runway Saturday during two Civil War fashion shows at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. The park held four days of events remembering the 150^th anniversary of the battle during the Atlanta Campaign.

These sticklers for accuracy spoke to me before the program, emphasizing the proper looks for the mid-19^th century.

Mature women would wear their “confined” hair parted down the middle. The household would have access to fashion and etiquette publications.

“As a girl grew up, her skirts grew longer,” said Janine Whiteman of Roswell, Ga.

Phillip Whiteman of Roswell, Ga., wore a businessman's frock coat with a fancy silk vest. His tophat was fashioned with wool felt.

Sheen and her daughters, Heather and Raquelle, wore V-neck dresses based on designs from the Archibald Smith Plantation Home in Roswell. “It’s a hot-weather dress.”

Just getting properly dressed was a considerable task.

Sherry Key explains hair design worn by Heather Sheen

A woman would don drawers, a chemise, stockings and garters, a corset and one to three petticoats, possibly a few more. A hoop or cage would give the illusion of several petticoats.

Of course, many women wore a plain work dress while doing chores.

“Hoops are dangerous around fire,” said one of the event participants.

Holly Sheen, Jeannie Rucker, Sherry Key, Heather Sheen

The cut of women's and men's shoes not all that different

Phillip and Janine Whiteman of Roswell, Ga.

Chris Rucker with picnic blanket tote

Tom Key as a colorful mule skinner.