Civil War show brings out the big gun

Published 6:42 am Sunday, February 5, 2012

Don’t worry.

The big cannon pointed towards Dalton at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center won’t be raining shells down on the city.

“That was recovered off the coast of Charleston, S.C. Just after the Civil War, they were taking a bunch of cannons to a scrap yard and the boat capsized. About 25 cannons sank into the ocean. A couple of guys recovered that one and restored it. They are taking it up to a collector in Nashville, and they brought it here. The tube alone weighs 13,000 pounds,” said Mike Kent, promoter of the Chickamauga Civil War Show and Sale taking place at the trade center this weekend.

Kent says the cannon is the biggest artifact displayed in the 16-year history of the show, and this year could be the biggest Civil War show Dalton has ever hosted.

“We had 1,000 (visitors) by noon today,” Kent said.

The show continues today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $8, with children under 12 admitted free.

Vendors were selling everything from uniforms to weapons to letters and postcards sent by soldiers. Kent opened up the show a couple of years ago to antiques and artifacts from the Civil War up through World War II, and there were plenty of items from both world wars as well as the Old West.

The cannon may have been the largest artifact at the show, but one of the most unusual was something that looked liked a pair of wooden feet and legs. On closer look, the items appeared to be a couple of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles.

“This is the way they sized boots back then. They’d slide the pieces in and out until the had the right size. You find pieces of them every now and then. But it’s very rare to see a complete one. This is the only complete pair I’ve ever seen,” said Bill Van Leuven, who has been collecting and dealing in Civil War artifacts for 29 years.

“I got started after my wife passed away,” said the Rome resident. “But I got interested in the Civil War when I was a child. My grandfather was born in 1851, 10 years before the Civil war started. He grew up on a plantation near Kingston, Tenn., and he used to tell me stories about life during the Civil War.”

Several other vendors said their interest was sparked by a personal connection to the war.

“I grew up in Pennsylvania, and my father had an ancestor who fought at Gettysburg. When I was a small boy, he took me to see the Pennsylvania monument at Gettysburg and pointed out his ancestor’s name,” said Robert Jones, president of the Kennesaw Historical Society.

Jones was signing and selling books he has written, such as “Civil War Prison Camps: A Brief History” and “The Battle of Allatoona Pass: The Forgotten Battle of Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.”

“I’ve got 12 on the Civil War, and I have a couple of railroad and a couple of ghost town books,” he said.  “I got laid off a couple of years ago. I’d been doing lectures for the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw. I decided to use that free time I suddenly had as an opportunity to do more research and to do more lectures and write these books.”