\nI have already told you how a Colby girl from Connecticut made her January Plan a study of the local hotels. Another Colby student, James Colburn, of California, produced a paper of even more value to the Waterville Historical Society, a study of the military weapons in the Redington Museum.<\/p>\n
While the Connecticut girl produced a fine paper filled with information about the hotels, much was already known about Waterville taverns from the earliest as to the recent demolition of the Elmwood. But almost nothing was known about the old guns that have been exhibited in the museum for many years. There are fourteen guns in this collection. While they came from several donors, the majority were given to the museum by the Bangs and the Heath families. Isaac Bangs, captain of Company A of Joshua Chamberlain’s famous Twentieth Maine in the Civil War, was discharged from service in the rank of Brigadier General, the only Waterville man to earn the rank of General while in the war service. After the war he engaged in real estate and insurance business in this city. He gave the local Historical Society many relics of the Civil War, including rifles, bayonets, pistols, and uniforms, and he placed in the Society all the volumes containing records of the adjutant general of the U.S. from 1861 through 1865.<\/p>\n
William Heath was the man who, with his brother Francis, recruited Waterville t s first Civil War company only a few weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter started the war in 1861. That was Company H of the Third Maine. William Heath was the company’s captain and his brother Francis was its first lieutenant. When he was killed at the Battle of Gaines Mill in 1862, William had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. For him the Waterville post of Grand Army of the Republic was named. In his memory, his brother Francis and other members of the family gave guns and other relics of the war to the local museum.<\/p>\n
Now let us see what the student, James Colburn discovered about those old guns. The best way to get us started is to quote directly from this boy’s paper, presented to fulfill his January Plan at Colby in 1972. He says: “Four of the guns are hunting pieces dating from the mid-nineteenth century. The remaining ten are military weapons dating from 1834 to 1873. The military guns look much alike, for it is well known any new musket during that period invariably resembled the model that preceded it. The army rifle was always in a state of flux, with inventors constantly trying to alter its loading procedure, its caliber, and the number of rounds it could fire. On the other hand, the War Department was slow to adopt new inventions, so that a rifle made in 1860 seemed little different from one made in 1830.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Colburn continues: “The standard muskets and rifles used by the U.S. military services were made chiefly at two government arsenals, at Springfield, Mass., and at Harpers Ferry, Va, but many were also made by private contractors. The nation’s oldest armory was at Springfield, where as early as the Revolution parts made by local gunsmiths were assembled and proved by the Committee on Defense. Those early muskets were inscribed with an eagle and the initials U.S.”<\/p>\n
The Arsenal at Harpers Ferry was the one captured in John Brown’s raid in 1859. Though Brown’s band was captured and he himself executed, the Harpers Ferry Armory did not remain long an arsenal. Its Civil War Union Commander ordered it destroyed as he retreated from the advance of superior Confederate forces.<\/p>\n
Mr. Colburn’s account continues: “The earliest gun in the Waterville collection is a Springfield 1834 model. It is an example of the French type flintlock musket used by American military as a standard arm until 1842. From this particular piece the flintlock mechanism is missing, and its owner had cut the wooden piece supporting the barrel to modify it for hunting. A 69 caliber smooth bore musket, this was difficult to load and fire. When it was used, paper cartridges had already eliminated the clumsy practice of measuring the powder, but loading was still a consuming task. The soldier opened the pan, bit the end off the cartridge, poured a little of the contents into the primer, shut the pan, poured the rest of the powder down the barrel, drew out the ramrod and rammed the cartridge and wad of paper down on top of the powder, returned the ramrod to its place, and was then ready to shoulder the gun.<\/p>\n
“The tedious procedure was eased somewhat by the invention of the percussion cap, based on a.chemical compound that exploded when struck a sharp blow. The cap was placed over a tube which protruded from the breech of the gun barrel. When the gun hammer struck the cap, the blow fired the gun. Although the percussion cap was known as early as 1815, the U.S. Military didn’t use it until 1840.”<\/p>\n
Other guns in the collection at the Museum are Harpers Ferry models of 1854 and 1855. Of them Mr. Colburn says: ”During the decade just before the Civil War, Harpers Ferry was preferred to Springfield because it was nearer Washington. The model 1854 embodied two improvements over the old musket: a percussion system and rifling. A rifle, as opposed to a musket, is a gun with grooves running inside the barrel from breech to muzzle. The first rifling was straight, designed to reduce bore friction when loading from the muzzle. But later the grooves were cut in spiral so that the spinning bullet would leave with greater force and accuracy.<\/p>\n
“It was the 1855 model, however, that was standard for the Union Army in the Civil War. All subsequent Civil War models, whoever manufactured them, were patterned on that one.<\/p>\n
“Another rifle in the Museum is a U.S. Trenton of 1864. It is similar to all the other rifle muskets of the Civil War period. It was a big improvement over the old muskets. Complete loading and firing time was only 20 seconds, a difference that often saved the life of its infantry user. This gun was not made at a U.S. Armory, but was a contract job. As the war progressed, the government had to rely heavily on private industry for its increased need for arms. The loss of Harpers Ferry early in the war had made reliance on private manufacturers even more necessary. The trouble with such private manufacture was that it was infiltrated with greedy war profiteers. Eager to make a fast buck, many makers of guns cared little for the worth or quality of their products. The U.S Trenton was the result of one of those scandals. As early as 1861, Addison Burt and James Hodge obtained contracts for 100,000 Springfield rifles. They formed the Trenton Arms Co. of Trenton, N. J. The delivery price was supposed to be $20, but so many proved defective , that the firm settled for $17. One of those scandal guns now rests in the Waterville Historical Society.<\/p>\n
“In the Redington Museum are three Sharpes Carbines dated respectively 1848, 1859, and 1863. That weapon was breech-loading and shorter than the usual rifle. The earliest one in the Museum, that of 1848, is heavily encrusted with rust, but it shows clearly the early use of breech-loading mechanism. The later models show only slight changes. The breech rather than muzzle loading was a significant improvement. It was still single shot and each cartridge was inserted by hand, but did not have to be broken to pour the powder into the muzzle. However, it still used the old paper cartridges, for metal cartridges were unknown until after the Civil War.<\/p>\n
“Manufactured in Hartford, Conn., those guns were called Civil War Sharpes. The name Sharpes became a household word. Sharpes Carbines were used by John Brown in his raid on Harpers Ferry. An amusing point about those old carbines was that, because of Henry Ward Beecher’s leadership against slavery, they became known as Beecher’s Bibles. It came about in this way. At the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, when there was bitter contest in Congress as to whether the territory that later became those two states should be slave or free, actual fighting and bloodshed occurred on the territorial soil. The area became known as ‘Bloody Kansas’.<\/p>\n
“Allover the nation, inspired by Henry Ward Beecher, as well as by other such abolitionist firebrands as William Lloyd Garrison, funds were raised to ship rifles to Kansas. To hide their identity, crates containing the rifles were often marked ‘Bibles’. Hence, the military contents of those supposedly religious crates came to be known as Beecher’s Bibles.<\/p>\n
“Fortunately, the Redington Museum collection contains an early post-Civil War rifle that exemplifies another important advance in weapons. It is a U. S. Springfield of 1873, which used metal cartridges. Manufacturers had done some experimenting with metal to replace paper in cartridges, even during the Civil War, but little progress was made until a new weapon was devised to handle them. That came about rapidly after the close of the war.<\/p>\n
“In 1872 the Ordnance Board tested a variety of both foreign and domestic rifles to secure the best breech-loader. They selected the single shot Springfield Model 1873, and it is one of those rifles that is now in the Waterville museum. In fact there are actually two of them there, but only one is in prime condition, with oil still present in the breech mechanism. While it looks much like the older rifles in the same collection, it is actually much different. It was the first government issue rifle to be made of steel rather than iron, and it used metal cartridges. As evidence of the government’s slowness to adopt improvements, it may be pointed out that, good as was this Springfield 1873, it was not the best weapon available at the time. Both western whites and Indians were then already using a repeating, not a single shot tine – the Winchester 1873, a 44 caliber, level action, repeater. The U.S. Military turned down those repeaters with their so-called magazine loading. The reactionaries of the Ordnance Board said they were fads that wouldn’t last. No gun was supposed to have more than one shot without reloading.”<\/p>\n
“The cause of General Custer’s defeat and massacre of his troops at the Little Big Horn was not solely larger Indian forces. It was also a fact that his single-load Springfields were no match for the Indians’ Winchester repeaters. As late as 1898, U.S. infantry was armed with those 1873 Springfields, when Teddy Roosevelt led them up San Juan Hill in the Spanish War.<\/p>\n
“There is just one example of the famous Remington rifle in the Waterville Museum. It was not an American Army rifle, because the U. S. turned it down in 1872. But its manufacturer, E. Remington & Sons, found a ready market in Europe and this laid the foundation of what became our nation’s leading manufacturer of guns.”<\/p>\n
As President of the Waterville Historical Society, I can assure you that the Society is very grateful to this young man from California for his patient scholarly work in identifying the guns in the Redington Museum.<\/p>\n
Year: 1972<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #928, Broadcast on April 9, 1972<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42945,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}