Exhibit of Civil War Timepieces Planned at the NAWCC Museum in Columbia, PA

I've been reading an excellent book: Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America, by Douglas R. Egerton (Basic Books, 2016) and early on I have already come across two interesting references to pocket watches:

- After the Battle of Ball's Bluff on October 31, 1861, which was a disaster for the Union, First Lt. Norwood Penrose (Pen) Hallowell of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry was forced to swim across the Potomac River at night to avoid capture by Confederates. As Egerton relates, Hallowell stripped off his clothes and swam the river "with his sword in one hand and his watch around his neck." Obviously, that watch was important to him.

- During the Battle of Cedar Mountain, on August 9, 1862, another Confederate victory, Lt. Robert Gould Shaw of the 2nd MA Infantry and the future colonel of the celebrated 54th MA Infantry, narrowly avoided serious injury and possible death when his pocket watch absorbed the impact of a Confederate musket ball. Bullet-struck watches have always both fascinated and appalled me. The Civil War Museum of Philadelphia has in its collection another bullet-struck watch that belonged to Sgt. John O. Foering of the 28th Pennsylvania Infantry.
 
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The "Timeless Testaments: Civil War Watches and the Men Who Carried Them" exhibit at the NAWCC Museum in Columbia, PA closed last Friday. However, the program and the five presentations from the opening day seminar are available by visiting my website:


Just scroll down the page and you'll find the links.
 
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