Old Guns Used In Civil War Back Home On Lookout Mountain

Some old 19^th century musket guns had once stood abandoned and neglected in a Lookout Mountain cave, but they later became quite sought after.

And now, to add a likely final conclusion to the story, six of the nine are back home on Lookout Mountain for all to see – nearly 90 years after they went a number of decades when basically no one probably saw them.

 

As those who frequent the Lookout Mountain, Tenn., Town Hall know, a nice display case has been erected in the entrance hall in recent weeks showcasing them and offering some historical information.

 

The guns – which are considered muskets instead of rifles because their barrels did not have irregular grooves inside to shoot straighter bullets -- are on long-term loan from Lookout Mountain Fire and Police Chief Charles “Chuck” Wells.

He bought them from Civil War relic and gun collector Charlie Harris, who grew up on Lookout Mountain and now lives in Ooltewah.

 

“I asked him what his plans were, and he said he would probably donate them to a museum,” said Chief Wells in explaining how the guns ended up at the Town Hall. “I said that instead of donating them to a museum, let me bring the guns to Lookout Mountain. So we worked out a deal.”

 

He did not want to say what the purchase price was.

 

Mr. Harris said ideally he would have loved to see them end up in a museum display at a Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park facility, but knew that would be a challenge with park funding issues.

 

So he is glad he was connected with Chief Wells after Candice Grayson, who was looking to get her son some Civil War memorabilia for Christmas last year and knew Chief Wells, was put in touch with Mr. Harris through Joel Fortune. That eventually led to a discussion between Chief Wells and Mr. Harris.

 

“When Chuck came up with the idea, that just hit a cord,” said Mr. Harris.

 

According to some information in the display case and in a book written by Mr. Harris about two years ago, the guns had been found in a cave on the west side of Lookout Mountain in 1931 by a Chattanooga lawyer named Watson while he was hiking.

 

Mr. Harris is not sure whether it was a cave or small hole in the bluff area, and learned of Mr. Watson’s last name only this year.

 

A check in a couple of city directories from the early 1930s shows a William J. Watson, who was in the realty business and was also a lawyer. It is not clear if this would be the same person, but he was the only Watson listed as a lawyer. His office was in Room 417 of the Hamilton National Bank Building (now the covered-up First Tennessee) downtown, and he lived at a couple of addresses in the Highland Park area.

 

Mr. Watson had taken the guns to his office and displayed them for a number of years until his death, at which time his wife, who was apparently not as interested in them as he was, began giving them away.

 

That is when Mr. Harris entered the picture. As a child several years before graduating from Baylor School in 1959, he had seen one of the guns on display at the home of friend Bill Haynes, and learned the story about them being found in a cave.

 

That caused a deep curiosity that stayed with Mr. Harris until adulthood, when he acquired the Haynes gun in his 20s in the 1960s. He slowly over the years began trying to attain his objective – to use military lingo -- of acquiring as many as he could.

 

“One thing led to another, and to another,” Mr. Harris, who worked with TVA doing aerial photography for contour mapping, recalled with a laugh.

 

He eventually found six of the nine guns, including one only in the last couple of years. Some of the historic weapons had literally traveled almost as far as a shot heard ‘round the world, so it took awhile. After the first one, he found one in a barbershop in Jasper, Tenn., in 1971, and another in Ringgold, Ga., in 1974.

 

Another one was obtained in a 1998 Civil War sale in Nashville, while the fifth was obtained in February 1999 at a show in Dalton, Ga., after having been acquired from someone else at an estate sale in Sevierville, Tenn.

 

The six guns are a Springfield Model 1816 Type II, two Springfield Model 1842s (which now look different from each other), a French C&M Model 1777, a Harpers Ferry Model 1842, and a Springfield Model 1810.

 

Of the other three, he knows one is in Dallas, Texas, but the location of the other two are unknown.

 

While the guns are valuable in a collecting sense and due to their connection to Lookout Mountain, they likely were not considered very valuable at the time of the Civil War, due to the fact they had become a little outdated. In fact, they were considered obsolete, as one dates to the 1700s.

 

As the display says, a Confederate brigade under Brig. Gen. John Creed Moore had been captured and its members were released in a prisoner exchange at Demopolis, Ala., in October 1863. Needing to be put back into service quickly, the brigade was given some outdated guns found in the Demopolis railroad station for training, with the promise they would use good guns when they went back into battle.

 

They were sent up to Lookout Mountain but never received any guns. Some cold temperatures arrived on the mountain a few days before the battle, and that might have caused some of the soldiers to find shelter.

 

And for some unexplained reason, the guns were apparently abandoned in the cave shortly before, during or after the “Battle Above the Clouds” on the facing of Lookout Mountain in late November 1863.

 

While they were apparently never used in battle, at least on Lookout Mountain during the war, the guns are now used to teach history a few yards from where they once spent several decades. And their digs are much better than in the cold, damp cave or hole.

 

“After I worked out a deal, I went to Jim Bentley, the fire and police commissioner, about displaying them, and he was all in favor,” said Chief Wells. “And then I went to Mayor Walker Jones, who gave us the approval, and we began on it immediately.”

 

An inset area just inside the entrance was converted into a wood frame display case by Lt. Cary Taylor of the Lookout Mountain Police Department, who spent several weeks doing the work, including using a blow torch to give the wood a stained appearance. The guns are secured by being inside a case and with some old-style replica locks and keys.

 

Lt. Taylor’s teenage daughter, Gracie, an aspiring artist, painted the background of Lookout Mountain inside.

 

Chief Wells, who studied the Union perspective of the Civil War while living in Springfield, Ill., as a high school freshman and the Confederate perspective as a junior at Soddy-Daisy High before graduating in 1982, is pleased with the result.

 

“Everybody that has seen it has been absolutely positive over it. There has been no negative reaction whatsoever,” he said.

 

“And we plan on leaving this for a very long time if it is OK with the town.”

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net