Col. Ellsworth Coat and Marshall House Flag

civilwarincolor

2nd Lieutenant
Joined
Oct 27, 2012
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California
I had a customer asking a few questions about an image of Francis Brownell that they had purchased. I went looking for a few answers and found some images that I had not seen before so I thought I would share them here.

The first one is of Col. Ellsworth Uniform being worn in 1961! Amazing that so recently a historian would do something like this!!!

PhotoCivilWarUniform.jpg

Here is the coat as it appears today:
Expired Image Removed


Finally is the flag that Ellsworth cut down from the Marshall house. As you can see it was pretty much destroyed by souvenir hunters. What a shame.

MarshallHouseFlagInstallation.jpg
 
Pictures of Francis Brownell's Medal of Honor awarded in 1877 for killing Jackson. Inscribed: “The Congress to Sergt Frank E. Brownell, 11th N.Y. Vol Inf’y for gallantry in shooting the murderer of Col. Ellsworth at Alexandria, VA, May 24, 1861.”
http://www.civilwar.si.edu/firstblood_brownell_medal.html
 
Pictures of Francis Brownell's Medal of Honor awarded in 1877 for killing Jackson. Inscribed: “The Congress to Sergt Frank E. Brownell, 11th N.Y. Vol Inf’y for gallantry in shooting the murderer of Col. Ellsworth at Alexandria, VA, May 24, 1861.”
http://www.civilwar.si.edu/firstblood_brownell_medal.html

The part of the story that I find interesting is that Brownell refused the initial MoH because it was not inscribed. I don't know about any of the rest of you, but if I had been awarded the MoH I would not be refusing it for an inscription!
 
What type of weapon killied Ellsworth ? That hole is 2 times the size of a quarter.

Colonel Ellsworth was killed by James Jackson (owner of the Marshall house hotel) with a shotgun. When Jackson attempted to fire the second barrel there was a misfire and Brownell was able to fire his weapon killing Jackson. The size of the hole indicates that the shotgun was fired from nearly point blank range.
 
Ellsworth's death -- coming in May 1861, when very few men had actually died yet in the war -- was particularly a blow to Lincoln, for whom Ellsworth had clerked back in Illinois in 1860. Ellsworth worked on Lincoln's campaign, and subsequently came to Washington with him before going to New York to raise a Zouave regiment. Ellsworth had even lived briefly in the White House, rooming with Lincoln's oldest son, Robert. A funeral service was subsequently held in the East Room of the White House for Ellsworth.

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The photo of Nancy Cosselman wearing Ellsworth coat does display a truly reckless thing to do with an irreplaceable artifact but it is truly amazing (if it was well preserved after 100 years, then I don't think it is as bad as it looks). As I'm sure many of us here have visited museums and seen the actual clothes people wore back then, it always amazes me how small most people were at that time. That being said, it is hard for me to believe Ellsworth was able to cut down such an enormous flag (I'm not sure what fabric it was made of) and carry it down the stairs. Truly an amazing feat.

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This is the image of the incident that I grew up with. it's from Great Battles of the Civil War, published by Life magazine for the Civil War Centennial. But this image is very misleading, for it leaves out the other people who were with Ellsworth and Brownell. It also fails to illustrate the enormous size of the flag. And seeing this helped me to ignore the other guests of James Jackson's hotel who were there at the time of the incident and witnessed it.
 
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I had a customer asking a few questions about an image of Francis Brownell that they had purchased. I went looking for a few answers and found some images that I had not seen before so I thought I would share them here.

The first one is of Col. Ellsworth Uniform being worn in 1961! Amazing that so recently a historian would do something like this!!!

PhotoCivilWarUniform.jpg

Though scarcely "historians", this was at the same time many artillery reenactors were wearing CW-surplus artillery shell jackets for the Centennial! I've owned three of these in my years collecting and one was purchased from a former reenactor who had worn it and ripped out the shoulder seams, which could at least be mended. In 1989 I saw a couple of them being worn by extras on the movie Glory and the same thing happened to one of them. In 1961 one of these cost a whopping $12.50 from a mail-order ad; today if you can find one they're a couple of thousand $$!
 
Marshall must have used a smoothbore loaded with shot to create a hole that large. I wonder if one of those early vests would have stopped the shot? I know it wouldn't stop a round ball.
 
Though scarcely "historians", this was at the same time many artillery reenactors were wearing CW-surplus artillery shell jackets for the Centennial! I've owned three of these in my years collecting and one was purchased from a former reenactor who had worn it and ripped out the shoulder seams, which could at least be mended. In 1989 I saw a couple of them being worn by extras on the movie Glory and the same thing happened to one of them. In 1961 one of these cost a whopping $12.50 from a mail-order ad; today if you can find one they're a couple of thousand $$!

It's amazing how much the costs has skyrocketed in the last 50 years. Chances of getting fakes would have been much less as well.

As for wearing a period coat, I would probably put one on today given the opportunity. I think it would be only for the sake of saying that I had done it and it would not have been worn for more than the time it took to take a photo. It would break my heart if I had been the ones to have ripped the seems out of a period piece. As for Ellsworth coat, this is the coat that he was wearing when he was killed. Be it 1961 or 1861 I could not imagine choosing to wear his coat anymore than I could imagine to wear the Stonewall Jackson's raincoat that he wore at the time of his death.

It did remind me of another historic artifact being posed for the camera though. There is a photo on the LOC site here that shows Edwin B. Pitts, Chief Clerk of the Judge Advocate General's Office posing with the pistol that Booth used to kill Lincoln! This photo was taken in 1937.

Oh, if YouTube had only been around as long, what kind of foolishness would we have seen recorded!

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Marshall must have used a smoothbore loaded with shot to create a hole that large. I wonder if one of those early vests would have stopped the shot? I know it wouldn't stop a round ball.

shotgun.jpg


This is James Jackson's double-barreled shotgun that he used to kill Elmer Ellsworth.

http://www.civilwar.si.edu/firstblood_shotgun.html#

Marshall_Flag_2.jpg


This is a star from the flag. This piece is on display at the Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site in Alexandria, Virginia. I've been to Fort Ward several times and I've seen this star on the wall. It never occurred to me how big this flag was until I saw the remains in the photo.
 
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