Treasures from the CSS Georgia: Conserved artifacts from vessel are carefully stored, awaiting their moment in a museum's spotlight

Shanna Daniel examines cannon (U.S. Navy: Spc. 2nd Class Mutis A. Capizzi)

CSS Georgia ammunition fuzes (US Navy photo)

More than 4,000 artifacts from the ironclad CSS Georgia that have undergone conservation are at the Washington Navy Yard, where officials are cataloging and storing them in hopes that an institution will eventually come forward with a exhibit plan.

The items -- which run the gamut from ammunition and machinery to an artillery piece and propeller -- rest in crates, wooden boxes and other containers.

Many are put in archival bags and are covered with foam and padding, said Shanna Daniel, a conservator with the Naval History and Heritage Command’s Underwater Archaeology Branch.

The first shipment from Texas A&M University’s Conservation Research Laboratory in College Station arrived in Washington earlier this year and another was recently received.

Propeller is pulled from Savannah River (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Savannah)

Daniel and others ensure that the artifacts are kept in relative humidity between 40 percent and 50 percent and that rooms have a constant temperature of between 65 and 70 degrees. Humidifiers and dehumidifiers help keep conditions stable.

While items would normally go in cabinets, where they can be seen, the boxes will soon be moved to another facility as the warehouse is renovated.

The CSS Georgia was a floating battery on the Savannah River that kept any Union marauders away during the Civil War.

The scattered remains of the scuttled Confederate ship was moved by the US Army Corps of Engineers as part of a massive harbor-deepening project in Savannah. The contemporary salvaging of the ironclad began with the symbolic raising of a piece of casemate -- protective armor made up of railroad track iron -- in November 2013.

Since then, at least 14,000 artifacts were sent to Texas for conservation, which for several items will last many more years.

Daniel shows a brass elevation sight (U.S. Navy photo)

A unique aspect of the CSS Georgia was its armor: Builders in Savannah -- limited by resources and technology – used sections of railroad track for the casemate and other protective features. Some of those railroad pieces are now in storage at the Navy Yard.

“One archaeologist said there were seven types used to put this ship together. It was ingenious to come up with these resources to do that,” Daniel recently told the Picket.

The conservator said that story and those about other artifacts could be educational for a variety of audiences.

The US Navy -- which owns the vessel – has encouraged museums “to obtain a vision” on how they might display artifacts and tell the CSS Georgia’s story. Several institutions visited the salvage site in 2017, but there has been no recent contact from any, Daniel says.

Artifacts in shipping crates (U.S. Navy: Spc. 2nd Class Mutis A. Capizzi)

That’s not a rare situation, she said. The museums may be waiting for more of the artifacts – especially the larger cannon – to complete conservation. And institutions must comply with regulations regarding federally owned and administered archaeological collections and come up with a good bit of money for such an exhibit.

The Picket has reached out to the Army Corps’ office in Savannah for more information on the status and timetable of artifact conservation.

More Camp Lawton prison site artifacts: Railroad spike, sash clasps, bricks, whiteware sherd and a copper rivet

Clasp for sash worn by a Confederate (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, GSU)

A spring-fed stream and a towering stockade wall separated Federal prisoners and the young men in gray who guarded them at Georgia’s Camp Lawton for a few short weeks in autumn 1864.

A lingering question for archaeologists who have been working on the site for nearly a decade is what else separated them -- especially when it came to food, supplies, shelter and general living conditions.

The 10,000 Union captives lived mostly on a hillside while their captors were scattered in different areas of the stockade exterior and artillery fortifications. The Federals built shebangs and other structures to provide shelter while the Confederates, mostly members of Georgia reserve regiments, apparently depended on tents and perhaps a barracks for officers.

Based on some archaeological finds in the past couple years, evidence suggests it “seems like the guards are a little better supplied than initially suggested,” said Dr. Ryan McNutt, director of the Camp Lawton Archaeology Project at Georgia Southern University in nearby Statesboro.

The Picket spoke recently with McNutt about artifacts that are linked to the Confederate troops who occupied camps in what is now Magnolia Springs State Park. The following items were found this year. You can read here about a stirrup found last week.


DIE-STAMPED SASH BUCKLES/CLASP

Clasp for sash worn by Confederate (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, GSU)

Sashes apparently were used as marks of rank for Confederate militia and quasi-military officials. Different colors may have been used by company officers or noncommissioned officers.

They were commonly found in Savannah, at jails and courthouses, said McNutt.

One of the buckles found at Camp Lawton (top image) has a crown motif; it may have come from Europe into Savannah via blockade runners, he said.

It’s known that elements of the 1^st through 5^th regiments of the Georgia Reserves were stationed at the site.

LINE OF BRICKS

Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University

McNutt is not yet sure how these were used. While it could be the remains of a chimney, they also could have been used as a foundation for a wall tent, with planks placed above. Bricks previously have been found in the prisoner area, the remains of ovens and tent foundations.

RAILROAD SPIKE

(Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University)

This likely came from the depot at Lawton, the terminus of a railroad line that carried Federal prisoners from the small town of Millen. It could find all kind of uses in a camp, including tents and other structures.

CERAMIC // WHITEWARE SHERD

Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University

From a Camp Lawton Facebook post in May: “Our whiteware sherd from yesterday has two possible sources. One is Clementson Bros, a North Staffordshire manufacture that produced a variety of plain and transfer print wares for the North American domestic market, and starts trading under the Clementson Bros name in 1867. However, the edge of the decoration appears to be a quasi royal arms, with a recumbent lion. You can just make out the paw. This doesn’t match any of their marks. It may be from Clementson & Young, which were imported into New Orleans for the southern market during the mid-19th century.”

COPPER ALLOY RIVET FROM A SOLDIER’S ACCOUTREMENTS

Courtesy of Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University

The Georgia Southern team the past couple years has concentrated on finding evidence of the Confederate camp and stockade features.

McNutt said they may return to the prisoner occupation area next, to look at how the camp was set up, what artifacts say about ethnic divisions among the POWs and to search for the sutler’s cabin.

'Out of the blue': A stirrup likely belonging to Confederate horse is a surprise find during excavations at Camp Lawton site in Georgia

The recovered stirrup (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University)

It’s been a fruitful summer field school for Georgia Southern University archaeology students conducting excavations on the site of Camp Lawton, a Civil War prisoner of war site that operated for a brief time in 1864.

They have found evidence of Confederate guard tent structures and other items that speak to the lives of those reservist soldiers, who had to make due with limited supplies and furnishings.

But it was an out-of-the-blue discovery Thursday that yielded perhaps the most compelling artifact of the season.

Project director Dr. Ryan McNutt was checking ground depressions – made more evident by recent heavy rains -- to verify areas that may have been marked by previous archaeological explorations.

“I was just basically pulling away pine needles, rotted vegetation and checking the area with a metal detector, looking for those spikes. When the metal detector hit (one) area, it overloaded the detector.” He thought he likely had come across a piece of garbage.

McNutt found, just under the topsoil, a stirrup that he believes was thrown into a trash pit during the operation of the prison. “I think it is pretty impressive. (Mine) was probably the first hand that has touched it since it was discarded there.”

He believes the stirrup and related horse tack found in the pit are almost certainly Confederate. “It is pretty much concrete evidence of Civil War activity,” McNutt said. “It matches those found at Confederate sites elsewhere.”

It’s quite possible the artifact was made before the war and belonged to an officer at the camp, perhaps a member of a Georgia reservist regiment or a Florida light artillery company.

McNutt said a pretty good chunk of metal remains in the rusted stirrup, which he estimates weighs about a half pound. He did not find any evidence of surviving leather and does not know why it may have been discarded.

The Georgia Southern team will check the maker’s mark and manufacturing style of the recovered artifact. They also will give it electrolysis treatment to protect the iron.

Views of summer work. (Camp Lawton Archaeology Project, Georgia Southern University)

Lance Greene, McNutt’s predecessor as Lawton project manager, said material students have been finding support the interpretation that the stirrup belonged to a Rebel soldier.

“I think that Dr. McNutt is beginning to get a sense of the location of some of the areas used by Confederates, which is especially difficult because a lot of that area has been intensively used since just after the Civil War,” said Greene, an associate professor at Wright State University in Ohio.  

Greene said another stirrup was recovered at the park long ago. “As I recall, it was a surface find, or at least did not have a good provenience.”

Archaeologists are accustomed to finding items from multiple time periods when working a site, and that’s occurred at the Lawton site, which was located on what is now Magnolia Springs State Park and an adjoining federal fish hatchery. But McNutt told the Picket on Friday that most of the items found this year come from the mid-19^th century.

The Confederate camp broke into the news in 2010 when federal, state and campus officials announced that its location had been confirmed and the site already was yielding a trove of artifacts. Lawton was only open for about six weeks in autumn 1864. It held about 10,000 POWs moved from Andersonville and other sites as Union troops moved into central and south Georgia after taking Atlanta.

COMING SOON: Photos of more recent discoveries at Camp Lawton

Recovered guns from CSS Peedee now on display in SC

After four years of conservation in North Charleston, the three massive cannons of the Confederate cruiser CSS Peedee have been returned to Florence County, S.C. The cannons were installed at the Florence County Veterans Affairs Center, adding to the area’s rich history of artifacts from the Civil War, reported TV station WMBF. • Article

UPDATE: Rare flag carried by Pennsylvania African-American regiment sold for $196K to Atlanta History Center

(Courtesy of Morphy Auctions)

A flag painted by hand for one of 11 African-American regiments from Pennsylvania was auctioned for $196,800, including fees, to the Atlanta History Center.

Acclaimed African-American artist David B. Bowser created the banner for the 127^th U.S. Colored Troops. It depicts a soldier waving farewell to Columbia, a symbol of the United States, with the words “We Will Prove Ourselves Men.”

Of the 11 such flags Bowser painted, the 127^th flag is the only known to survive.

“Seven others are known only from photographs. Those seven flags were sent to the military museum at West Point in 1906, but incredibly, were thrown out in the 1940s,” said Dan Morphy, president of Morphy Auctions, in a press release, before the sale. The auction house had said the banner might go for as high as $250,000 on Thursday.

D.B. Bowser (Wikipedia)

The 1864 flag in recent years has belonged to the Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library in Philadelphia. But the museum, which had the 6-by-6-½-foot silk flag restored a couple years ago, decided to part with it to help bolster the venue’s finances, the Associated Press reported. The Picket reached out to the museum for comment.

The Atlanta History Center, which recently restored and reopened The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, said the purchase was the most it has ever spent on a single artifact. "It's one of those things that doesn't need words to tell you what it is and what it represents," said center president and CEO Sheffield Hale.

Bowser, the son of a fugitive slave whose home was a stop on the Underground Railroad, designed banners and flags for a variety of clients. He helped recruit black soldiers and was commissioned to paint 11 flags for African-American regiments, which trained at Camp William Penn outside Philadelphia. The segregated units were led by white officers.

"Bowser's works were the first widely viewed, positive images of African Americans painted by an African American," according to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Joseph Becton of the African American Museum in Philadelphia told the Associated Press that Bowser’s flags were meant to be provocative.

According to the AP: “The banner for the 22nd regiment showed a black Union soldier pointing his bayonet at the chest of a fallen Confederate soldier who is tossing aside his sword, beneath a banner reading ‘Sic semper tyrannis,’ which translates into ‘thus always to tyrants.’ That was also the motto of Virginia at the time, so it was likely meant to enrage the enemy, Becton said.”

127th USCT flag detail (Courtesy of Morphy Auctions)

The 127^th was organized in late summer 1864 and took part in siege operations against Richmond and Petersburg until the end of the Civil War. Part of the Army of the James, it participated in one battle and several other actions. The regiment was at Appomattox for the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

"With meticulous attention to detail in restoration, the vibrant banner represents the epic struggle, valor and patriotism of the African-American troops during the Civil War," Morphy Auctions said.

Gordon Jones, senior military historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center, said in a statement:  “It’s an iconic knock-your-socks-off artifact. Even an enlisted man’s USCT uniform wouldn’t be as historically significant as this flag.”

The history center’s collection includes a brass drum belonging to a drummer boy of the all-black 55th Massachusetts Regiment, a knapsack used at the Battle of Olustee, Fla., by a soldier in the 8th USCT and a recently acquired canteen bearing the stencile mark of the 15th USCT, which guarded railroad lines in Tennessee during the 1864 Atlanta Campaign.