When dad got a job at Lockheed in Marietta GA we lived practically across the street from the entrance to the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park and a place called Kolb's Farm where a battle took place. I found grape shot, what we called minnie balls, bullets, shell fragments and a part of a belt buckle while raking the yard. Dad decided he should take them so I would not lose them. It was nice of him to lose them for me. I have no idea what became of them or the arrowheads, spear points and pottery shards I also found.
Civil War Battlefield sites
- Thread starter Medvedya
- Start date
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Bummer
Erich
the old Sage
Nice, would love to visit Gettysburg some day.
Erich
the old Sage
"To be honest, I just lost faith in Joe Hooker" - Joe Hooker
Erich
the old Sage
There was a spot off the trail on Kennesaw Mountain that faced SW that had prickly pear cactus, yucca, big rocks and not too many trees that reminded me of Abilene Texas where I'm from. There was also a Civil War quarry that was not easy to find that my CAP squadron would go rappelling at. It was like Land of the Lost, just very different from the rest of the park. One day we were there and the park rangers ran us off and told us never to come back. So when we did come back to rappel we just made sure we were stealthier by parking the vehicles at a near by restaurant.
Erich
the old Sage
Erich
the old Sage
Checkertail20
Airman
- 70
- Aug 14, 2024
I have visited Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam, Spotsylvania, Wilderness, and Ball's Bluff.
When I was a kid in the 1960s, we took our family vacations to Carolina Beach in NC and the Charleston SC area. It happened that the NC State Archaeology team was excavating Fort Fisher during one of those visits, and the head guy took the time to explain what was going on to me. He even gave me a key that they'd found in Col Lamb's quarters! (But my grandmother, who hated clutter of any kind, threw it out when I went off to college a few years later.) In those days there were souvenir stands all along the road leading into Wilmington, selling bullets and shell fragments that had been picked out of the sand. I still have half a dozen of those. And there were beams of some sort scattered around the Fort property, no idea what they were but we got some photos anyway.
At Charleston we naturally went down to the Battery as it used to be, before they put in a street along the edge and pushed everything else back. I have photos of my grandparents and their families at the Battery much longer ago than that. Very cool to see what it looked like then, but kind of sad to see how it's been hemmed in by subsequent development. Went out to Fort Sumter around the 100th anniversary of its bombardment, and before the modern exhibits and clean-up work had been done.
Years later I was working in Norfolk VA and I was very conscious of the fact that the duel between the Monitor and the Virginia had taken place literally in the water right outside the building I was in. I went over the Bay and walked the perimeter of Fortress Monroe, which had a very nice museum.
So glad to have seen all these things back then! I'll never get back that way again, though.
At Charleston we naturally went down to the Battery as it used to be, before they put in a street along the edge and pushed everything else back. I have photos of my grandparents and their families at the Battery much longer ago than that. Very cool to see what it looked like then, but kind of sad to see how it's been hemmed in by subsequent development. Went out to Fort Sumter around the 100th anniversary of its bombardment, and before the modern exhibits and clean-up work had been done.
Years later I was working in Norfolk VA and I was very conscious of the fact that the duel between the Monitor and the Virginia had taken place literally in the water right outside the building I was in. I went over the Bay and walked the perimeter of Fortress Monroe, which had a very nice museum.
So glad to have seen all these things back then! I'll never get back that way again, though.
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special ed
1st Lieutenant
- 6,157
- May 13, 2018
Not civil war history, but history. A very small tornado knocked down a tin building 1/4 mile from me. My neighbor was the son of a dairy farmer from the 1930s and this had been one of the barns. After the cleanup, my neighbor and his grandaughter found many arrowheads in the dirt where the barn stood. Not long after, he was telling this to his house guest, a teacher at the local university who had a great interest in American Indian history. About 100 feet from where the building had stood is a giant old Live oak tree. The prof surmises that Indians wintered under the tree making arrowheads and throwing the rejects where the building later stood. He also thinks the higher ground around the tree was the result of many baskets of dirt hauled there to make high ground as we are in a very flat part of south Louisiana. Spring of 2006 after a week of carwash like rain, water was almost up to my knees in the front yard making the baskets of dirt believable.
If you get a chance visit Gettysburg. Great place to take a self guided tour. I had a great grandfather and 2 great great uncles who served in the Union Army, New York Volunteers from Washington County NY. They were 3 brothers. One of the older ones, great Uncle Sam was shot in the left leg with a musket ball at the Battle of Peach Tree Creek in 1864. I think both older brothers Isaac and Sam were at Gettysburg. Their younger brother Henry, believe it or not my mother's GRANDFATHER, joined a year after that battle. I believe the 2 oldest were in the NY 123rd Infantry.
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