The man presented his Southern visitor with a unique gift: an authentic Gettysburg Federal knapsack he had been using as a feed sack.Īmid tables filled with muskets, bullets, and artillery shells, Chris Utley of Spring Hill, Tenn., offered for sale something unique: replica Civil War handkerchiefs. Both fought at Gettysburg, where, on a trip in 1976, Parker visited with a farmer who used gun barrels from the battle as part of his fence rail. Two of Parker’s great-great-grandfathers served in the Army of Northern Virginia-in the 14th and 6th Alabama. He used to have a 2 ½-gallon bucket filled with Civil War bullets, two-thirds of which he gave to kids. The next year, he actively began hunting for relics. Scratching at the Mississippi soil, he uncovered a bullet. Parker got hooked on relic hunting when his father took his family to Vicksburg in 1958. “I’m afraid,” Parker says, ruefully, “someone will buy it.” (Someone did.) Parker had an affinty for the two ounces of lead-asking price $2,000-which he kept in a small display case with a plaque on the front that reads, “One in a Million.” “Took a friend over 40 years to sell it to me,” he says. 58-caliber bullets that collided “perfect nose to nose” at Fort Blakely, Ala. “The Widow Maker,” I called it, tongue planted firmly in cheek.Ī show participant for more than 30 years, Parker pointed out his favorite relics: Confederate Selma Arsenal and Union. Filled with concrete and broken rebar, it was used by a previous owner as a decoration for a mailbox top. New York fashionistas have nothing on Billy Yank and Johnny Reb.Īt his display table, 71-year-old Mike Parker, a retired building supplies salesman from Birmingham, Ala., offered for sale for 150 bucks a massive cannon ball purchased in an antiques store in Corinth, Miss., in 1978. Exact reproductions of colorful, and useful, soldier handkerchiefs from South Union Mills. Not in your budget? Perhaps the Jefferson Davis clipped signature ($1,000) would pique your interest. If you wanted to spend your inheritance from grandma, you could fork over nearly $24,000 for the half-plate ambrotype of a Confederate officer who was wounded and captured at Gettysburg. The artifacts on sale at the last show brought lots of interested potential buyers. Unofficial colors for the event are white and gray: Attendees and dealers are overwhelmingly Caucasian, over 50, and male, leading one to wonder about its long-term viability. The firing of a replica cannon by reenactors outside reverberated through the Expo Park building shortly after the start of the show at 10 a.m. At least one of those tales may make you cringe. Though it isn’t clear whether the 2020 show will go off as planned, the dealers are looking forward to telling stories. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to lasso a story or two at this carnival / swap meet / temporary museum / marketplace. The event, first held in nearby Nashville, usually takes place at the same venue as Franklin’s annual rodeo. A “Civil War social,” Hicklen calls the show. In normal years, dealers come to Franklin every December eager to display collections and to bond with peers. “Hell no,” the 68-year-old Tennessee native told me. In its 33rd year, the two-day event founded and owned by Hicklen normally vied with a Mansfield, Ohio, show held every May for bragging rights as “The Greatest Civil War Show in America.” The Mansfield show was canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.ĭid Hicklen ever think the Franklin show would become such a huge deal in 1986? And it was the hundreds of history buffs shouldering past each other in crowded, “excuse me” aisles on two floors, gawking at muskets, munitions, and more. It was the sea of tables spread out before him at Franklin’s sprawling Williamson County Agricultural Expo Center last December, where roughly 550 dealers from 40 states-and two from overseas-offered for sale artifacts, oddities, and everything in between. But the sight of a 19th-century prosthetic limb or the image of a one-armed veteran wasn’t what has him jazzed as he stood on the ground floor of the Middle Tennessee Civil War Show. Steps from a chilling amputation display, militaria dealer Larry Hicklen wore a mile-wide grin. Want to buy a belt plate? A forage cap? This relic show has them, and more Civil War Artifacts and Oddities for Sale Close
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