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Burns' series boosted Civil War artifact sales
Burns' series boosted Civil War artifact sales
By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
Thursday, April 5, 2007 11:18 AM EDT
DOWAGIAC - By a "stroke of luck," Dan Stice started dealing Civil War artifacts at the same time filmmaker Ken Burns captivated PBS audiences with a five-night series about the "War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865."
"The market on Civil War stuff really skyrocketed in 1990 with Ken Burns," Stice said Wednesday night at The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College. "I couldn't keep it in my shop. I'd go to shows on the weekend and by Tuesday, two days after I brought it home, everything was sold. I was selling high-dollar Civil War artifacts to people in their 80s and 90s. It was amazing to me how much of an impact that five-night series Ken Burns put together had on the market. It just made a world of difference in prices.
"That's good, and here's why: The more valuable it is, the better the care. Antique Roadshow did a lot to hurt dealers, because it's tough to get things at a yard sale anymore, but the good thing is it's got everyone conscious of what this stuff's worth. They're less apt to mishandle it, throw it out, destroy it," he said.
SMC's spring lecture series concludes at 6:30 p.m. May 2 with Scott and Lisa Topping's program on war correspondent Webb Miller, who grew up in Pokagon Township.
Stice, of Eau Claire, Secretary Charles Pfauth of Baroda, Glenn Palen of New Buffalo and Rex Dillman of Buchanan are all affiliated with Berrien County Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW, http://suvcw.org), which perpetuates the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR).
Their Camp 85, named for Illinois veteran Frederick H. Hackeman, is based in Bridgman. Michigan has 23 of 176 local camps in the United States, though Pfauth said a group is forming in Cassopolis.
Pfauth said Camp 85 is working in Galien, where 72 Civil War veterans are buried, to replace seven tombstones.
Berrien County had GAR camps in Benton Harbor, St. Joseph, Berrien Springs, Buchanan, Coloma, Three Oaks, Galien, New Troy, Berrien Center and Niles.
Stice spent 25 years in the military, belatedly earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice at Andrews University and owned an antique mall in Watervliet. He said he has been "totally enamored" by the War Between the States since age 7, when he and his sister grew up with their maternal grandparents as neighbors.
His maternal grandmother had been reared by her paternal grandparents. Her paternal grandfather fought in the Civil War and died in 1915 when she was 13 years old. She used to curl up in his lap and listen to war stories.
Stice spent so much time flipping through a 1913 book "loaded with" Brady battlefield photography that he "wore it out" between 1955 and 1960.
It had to be rebound at Andrews' old book bindery in the 1980s, but made the trip to Dowagiac this snowy night.
"I'm not an historian of the war," Stice said. "My real expertise lies in the artifacts. I have a relatively small collection" which he featured along with guns and swords brought by Palen, a retired manufacturing supervisor.
Stice started with a uniform. The shell jacket's yellow or gold piping indicated cavalry. Red denotes artillery, light blue the infantry.
The short coat was favored over longer frocks officers wore because they could easily get on and off their horses.
Trousers originated with the New Jersey National Guard in 1864. New Jersey and New York were the only states with their own militias.
Pants are "quite rare" because they were presentable enough to wear to church, yet so durable soldiers wore them back to their farms after the conflict ended until they were consigned to rag bags.
At their waists cavalry members hung their swords, wore a holster for their revolvers and, in back, a leather cartridge pouch.
Even rarer are four-button sack coats, which is ironic because they were the most-issued garment during the war. Few survive because they weren't formal enough to hang in a closet like a dress uniform.
In 1993, when he had the antique mall in Watervliet, a woman in her 90s came in and offered him Civil War buttons from a cigar box. They came from her grandfather's uniform. The buttons were valued at $10 each - but she burned the uniform, which would have been worth $10,000.
Stice displayed a 35-star, 1863 American flag. Such banners seldom survive because of etiquette dictating they be burned when soiled and tattered. He has owned the flag for 10 years and said it came from the 142nd New York volunteers.
One of its infantry units saw action at Gettysburg. "It could have been there, but I can't prove it," he said of his fully-fringed flank flag. Silk battle streamers have long since disintegrated.
"If I had solid evidence, I wouldn't have been able to afford it 10 years ago. It's one of the few still in private hands." Tears could be from bullet holes. Next to the flag was an 1863 drum from the New York National Guard, a bugle and boots - "standard cavalry enlisted man's boots" with tabs to tug on the snug-fitting footwear, which left us with the saying to pull oneself up by their bootstraps.
He explained the difference between two similar-looking hats - a taller forage cap and a shorter "keppy," more often found on the heads of non-commissioned officers.
A dealer bought up all the military surplus for his catalog business, then built a store in an island castle in the Hudson River. He sold the caps for 29 cents - cheap enough that children could afford them.
On the forage cap the top is flat, with a welt connecting its body to the crown. On the keppy, "The body of the hat rolls up into the crown. It's hard to date keppies. A lot of them are postwar. Unless you can really nail down ones for sale, question it. They wore this hat until about 1895, when they went to the pillbox. If you want a proof-positive Civil War hat, buy a forage cap. Then the next thing you need to do is visit the battlefields out East. Gettysburg. Antietam. Shiloh. It takes four days to see Gettysburg right."
Palen showed the different blades on sabers - for "slashing" from horseback - compared to a stabbing sword. "Everybody carried a sword - even the doctors and chaplains. By 1862, the majority of Southern troops pitched their swords and got pistols."
Union swords can be identified by their inspector's mark "because they are counterfeited something terrible."
Palen, who said "normal height" for a soldier was 5-foot-8, showed against his 6-foot-2 frame how large a .58-caliber Springfield musket was fitted with a bayonet.
Paper cartridges came four to a tin - two lower, two upper - then loaded with the mini-ball and gunpowder.
"This is a lot of gun for a little fellow," Palen said. "Then you've got a pack on your back. It was awkward."
The musket would be eclipsed by a rifle billed as one you "could load in the morning and shoot all day. A square cardboard box held seven cartridges. Somehow a cavalary man would load this, and he could fire quite rapidly. It hung on the side of him, along with his pistol and sword. Lincoln personally inspected this kind of rifle and recommended it to buy."
Palen showed a pistol from early in the war. "They wouldn't just put a ball in there and fire at somebody. They'd take anything they could get. Nails. Stones. On horseback, you'd just aim in a general direction and hit somebody. That was the idea."
Three different handguns were made in .36 caliber, including one like Clint Eastwood's Josie Wales character favored. Sam Colt made some. Others were Smith and Wesson.
"This is just a mild representation of the pistols and long guns," Palen said. "There were better than 44 different calibers at the time of the Civil War. Everybody was copying everybody and trying to cheat on patents."
The Civil War pre-dated identifying dog tags, Palen noted.
"Before battle, they'd maybe have a buddy write their name on a piece of paper and put it in their pocket. Or, church groups would go through and women would sew a name inside the lapel. But the majority had nothing. That's why so many guys who never came back were 'lost' on the battlefield.
"I was lucky enough to find this pewter dog tag (resembling a coin) from the 151st infantry in LaPorte, Ind. This was the last regiment to go to the Civil War out of Indiana on Feb. 14, 1865. Rarely do you find something like this. It's sad that no one the foresight to be able to identity the soldier on the field. We take it for granted today."
Burns' series boosted Civil War artifact sales
By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
Thursday, April 5, 2007 11:18 AM EDT
DOWAGIAC - By a "stroke of luck," Dan Stice started dealing Civil War artifacts at the same time filmmaker Ken Burns captivated PBS audiences with a five-night series about the "War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865."
"The market on Civil War stuff really skyrocketed in 1990 with Ken Burns," Stice said Wednesday night at The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College. "I couldn't keep it in my shop. I'd go to shows on the weekend and by Tuesday, two days after I brought it home, everything was sold. I was selling high-dollar Civil War artifacts to people in their 80s and 90s. It was amazing to me how much of an impact that five-night series Ken Burns put together had on the market. It just made a world of difference in prices.
"That's good, and here's why: The more valuable it is, the better the care. Antique Roadshow did a lot to hurt dealers, because it's tough to get things at a yard sale anymore, but the good thing is it's got everyone conscious of what this stuff's worth. They're less apt to mishandle it, throw it out, destroy it," he said.
SMC's spring lecture series concludes at 6:30 p.m. May 2 with Scott and Lisa Topping's program on war correspondent Webb Miller, who grew up in Pokagon Township.
Stice, of Eau Claire, Secretary Charles Pfauth of Baroda, Glenn Palen of New Buffalo and Rex Dillman of Buchanan are all affiliated with Berrien County Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW, http://suvcw.org), which perpetuates the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR).
Their Camp 85, named for Illinois veteran Frederick H. Hackeman, is based in Bridgman. Michigan has 23 of 176 local camps in the United States, though Pfauth said a group is forming in Cassopolis.
Pfauth said Camp 85 is working in Galien, where 72 Civil War veterans are buried, to replace seven tombstones.
Berrien County had GAR camps in Benton Harbor, St. Joseph, Berrien Springs, Buchanan, Coloma, Three Oaks, Galien, New Troy, Berrien Center and Niles.
Stice spent 25 years in the military, belatedly earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice at Andrews University and owned an antique mall in Watervliet. He said he has been "totally enamored" by the War Between the States since age 7, when he and his sister grew up with their maternal grandparents as neighbors.
His maternal grandmother had been reared by her paternal grandparents. Her paternal grandfather fought in the Civil War and died in 1915 when she was 13 years old. She used to curl up in his lap and listen to war stories.
Stice spent so much time flipping through a 1913 book "loaded with" Brady battlefield photography that he "wore it out" between 1955 and 1960.
It had to be rebound at Andrews' old book bindery in the 1980s, but made the trip to Dowagiac this snowy night.
"I'm not an historian of the war," Stice said. "My real expertise lies in the artifacts. I have a relatively small collection" which he featured along with guns and swords brought by Palen, a retired manufacturing supervisor.
Stice started with a uniform. The shell jacket's yellow or gold piping indicated cavalry. Red denotes artillery, light blue the infantry.
The short coat was favored over longer frocks officers wore because they could easily get on and off their horses.
Trousers originated with the New Jersey National Guard in 1864. New Jersey and New York were the only states with their own militias.
Pants are "quite rare" because they were presentable enough to wear to church, yet so durable soldiers wore them back to their farms after the conflict ended until they were consigned to rag bags.
At their waists cavalry members hung their swords, wore a holster for their revolvers and, in back, a leather cartridge pouch.
Even rarer are four-button sack coats, which is ironic because they were the most-issued garment during the war. Few survive because they weren't formal enough to hang in a closet like a dress uniform.
In 1993, when he had the antique mall in Watervliet, a woman in her 90s came in and offered him Civil War buttons from a cigar box. They came from her grandfather's uniform. The buttons were valued at $10 each - but she burned the uniform, which would have been worth $10,000.
Stice displayed a 35-star, 1863 American flag. Such banners seldom survive because of etiquette dictating they be burned when soiled and tattered. He has owned the flag for 10 years and said it came from the 142nd New York volunteers.
One of its infantry units saw action at Gettysburg. "It could have been there, but I can't prove it," he said of his fully-fringed flank flag. Silk battle streamers have long since disintegrated.
"If I had solid evidence, I wouldn't have been able to afford it 10 years ago. It's one of the few still in private hands." Tears could be from bullet holes. Next to the flag was an 1863 drum from the New York National Guard, a bugle and boots - "standard cavalry enlisted man's boots" with tabs to tug on the snug-fitting footwear, which left us with the saying to pull oneself up by their bootstraps.
He explained the difference between two similar-looking hats - a taller forage cap and a shorter "keppy," more often found on the heads of non-commissioned officers.
A dealer bought up all the military surplus for his catalog business, then built a store in an island castle in the Hudson River. He sold the caps for 29 cents - cheap enough that children could afford them.
On the forage cap the top is flat, with a welt connecting its body to the crown. On the keppy, "The body of the hat rolls up into the crown. It's hard to date keppies. A lot of them are postwar. Unless you can really nail down ones for sale, question it. They wore this hat until about 1895, when they went to the pillbox. If you want a proof-positive Civil War hat, buy a forage cap. Then the next thing you need to do is visit the battlefields out East. Gettysburg. Antietam. Shiloh. It takes four days to see Gettysburg right."
Palen showed the different blades on sabers - for "slashing" from horseback - compared to a stabbing sword. "Everybody carried a sword - even the doctors and chaplains. By 1862, the majority of Southern troops pitched their swords and got pistols."
Union swords can be identified by their inspector's mark "because they are counterfeited something terrible."
Palen, who said "normal height" for a soldier was 5-foot-8, showed against his 6-foot-2 frame how large a .58-caliber Springfield musket was fitted with a bayonet.
Paper cartridges came four to a tin - two lower, two upper - then loaded with the mini-ball and gunpowder.
"This is a lot of gun for a little fellow," Palen said. "Then you've got a pack on your back. It was awkward."
The musket would be eclipsed by a rifle billed as one you "could load in the morning and shoot all day. A square cardboard box held seven cartridges. Somehow a cavalary man would load this, and he could fire quite rapidly. It hung on the side of him, along with his pistol and sword. Lincoln personally inspected this kind of rifle and recommended it to buy."
Palen showed a pistol from early in the war. "They wouldn't just put a ball in there and fire at somebody. They'd take anything they could get. Nails. Stones. On horseback, you'd just aim in a general direction and hit somebody. That was the idea."
Three different handguns were made in .36 caliber, including one like Clint Eastwood's Josie Wales character favored. Sam Colt made some. Others were Smith and Wesson.
"This is just a mild representation of the pistols and long guns," Palen said. "There were better than 44 different calibers at the time of the Civil War. Everybody was copying everybody and trying to cheat on patents."
The Civil War pre-dated identifying dog tags, Palen noted.
"Before battle, they'd maybe have a buddy write their name on a piece of paper and put it in their pocket. Or, church groups would go through and women would sew a name inside the lapel. But the majority had nothing. That's why so many guys who never came back were 'lost' on the battlefield.
"I was lucky enough to find this pewter dog tag (resembling a coin) from the 151st infantry in LaPorte, Ind. This was the last regiment to go to the Civil War out of Indiana on Feb. 14, 1865. Rarely do you find something like this. It's sad that no one the foresight to be able to identity the soldier on the field. We take it for granted today."
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