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calendar   Friday - February 08, 2013

Found It

I drive through Flemington NJ a couple of times every week. Up at the end of downtown, a couple blocks past the famous old courthouse, is the town’s little war memorial park. It’s on a little triangular island of land where three or four roads come together, right in front of the Presbyterian church. Like so many of them do, ours started out as a memorial to those who served in the Civil War but has had inscriptions added for each of the conflicts since. So it has a nice statue on a fancy plinth, a little walk around reflecting area, a flagpole, and of course an old cannon, pointing straight down Main Street. I don’t think anyone actually goes into the park to visit because it’s in the middle of a busy intersection, but we all see it all the time.

And for years I’ve been driving past it, and looking at that strange old cannon, and wondering what it was and when it was from. I’m no master of historic artillery, but I can tell the 1770s guns from the 1860s guns, and I can tell the difference between a naval gun, a coastal piece, and a field piece. (Ok, I also know a bit about Armstrong, Whitworth, Parrot, Borgard, Buffington, and the burst-proof laminated iron guns made by the good old Phoenix Iron Company who later used the same technology to make all those gorgeous little bridges around my county.) But this one always looked strange to me because it has an iron frame and what look like spring loaded hanging hooks sticking up above the carriage. It’s always been in the back of my mind to visit that little park one day, and see if I can’t read some maker’s data on the gun. But that never seemed to happen, and late last night I realized I really didn’t need to: I’ve got the whole world right here on my keyboard. Besides, my camera is still hiding in some box in the garage from when we moved, and it’s cold out. And snowing!! So start searching Drew.

image
Guns on Main Street. Click for a huge picture.


Ok, what do I know? I know the carriage is made of metal, steel or iron, not wood, so this is probably post-Civil War design. So I started trying to Google up “cannon” and “field piece” with various dates. I also knew that by 1915 the US was using fully modern artillery, so my time range was 1870-1900. And I looked and I looked, and found everything under the sun except what I wanted. So it was back to square one. Hmmph. Ok, where is this thing? It’s in a park in Flemington. Fine, let’s Google “Flemington park cannon” ... and that started me in the right direction. It turns out that there are tons of little web pages made by folks who have a hobby called geo caching, where they go somewhere interesting, take down the coordinates on their GPS, then publish that location with some bit of a clue or a few pictures for others to go and take a look. And those that do, write comments on that page and a big discussion ensues. So I found one of those, and it lead me realize, DUH, that in this simplified age, the little park would be called a Soldier’s Monument instead of a War Memorial. Plug in those words. And ta-da. Mostly. A fellow UTwp resident had made a nice web page on the park, with a good picture of the field piece (I borrowed it above) and the thought that this was a 3” gun from the Spanish-American War. And he was right, mostly. The gun was actually from before the S-A War, had a 3.2” bore, and was technically obsolete when we sent it down there. But hey, so were our rifles and our food and our logistics and our medicine. That little war was the biggest FUBAR of the age. And with a bit more looking, I finally opened the floodgates. Heck, I found the user’s manual. I found the builder’s specs. I found photos of similar ones. And I even found a video of a bunch of 21st Century Americans literally having a blast shooting off real antique cannons which they own, shooting full power loads, with explosive shells. Legally. Was this a great country once or what?

The rest of the story below the fold, because this post will be long. But I’ll put in lots of pictures and data and links so hopefully it won’t be too boring. I hope. The whole post is another one of my “interesting history is all around you, open your eyes and amaze yourself at what you can learn if you try” posts.

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 02/08/2013 at 08:07 AM   
Filed Under: • HistoryMilitary •  
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