Getting started collecting

[zburkett]

I'm old enough to remember when our school had a rifle team.

 

[kevikens]

I'm old enough to remember when our school had a rifle team.

I missed out on that but my older brothers attended such a school with a rifle team. They were allowed to bring their own rifles, cased, on the El to school. As I read this it boggles my imagination that such a time existed in America where I could let my students throw hand grenades (dummies), handle muskets, tape up on the chalk board both 34 star US flags and Confederate battle flags and the Stars and Bars, monitor cafeteria duty between classes in a Confederate uniform (left the musket and bayonet in the classroom) or sometimes Union blue or Doughboy khaki brown and my brothers could take rifles onto the El and nobody seemed to be upset by any of this and this was in the North. How very different now.

 

[James N.]

Members of my reenactment group used to routinely visit classrooms clad in our uniforms and carrying our weapons to give presentations to high school or junior high school history classes. The most recent such event I attended was only a couple of years ago but was for an exclusive private school where the kids were all intelligent and paid attention wonderfully!

 

[Billy1977]

Have you looked on the website of the Civil War museum in Richmond, Virginia? They have a TON of photos online of exactly what you're talking about, personal items carried by the soldiers. Just use their search feature and you can find all sorts of stuff from canteens to handkerchiefs to cartridge boxes to folding field desks to gloves and long underwear. Here's the link:

https://acwm.org/collection

https://acwm.org/collection/archives/military-objects

Hope you like it as much as I do. It doesn't have every single type of thing carried by the soldiers but everything on there is a genuine period item, not a reproduction or modern fake, so it's at least good as sort of a reference guide to what something is supposed to look like.

Also, and forgive me if someone else already mentioned it, but there are several books in print that are designed as guides, some as price guides even, to collecting Civil War artifacts. I have a few of them. Some of the more well-known ones it seems are Francis Lord's Civil War Collector's Encyclopedia (Vol. 1 and 2 are sold together, and Vols. 3, 4 and 5 are sold together), Chuck Lawliss's The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Civil War Collectibles, Richard Friz's Civil War Collectibles Price Guide, the several editions of Warman's Civil War Collectibles and Robert Jones's The Civil War Soldier - His Personal Items. On Amazon you can buy some of them used for a nice cheap price and they might be a good place to get started. I personally can't afford to collect but I just like to know what the gear looked like and have photos of it.