One of the most interesting historical small arms related businesses I have come across in some time is Eras Gone Bullet Molds. Company founder Mark Hubbs wanted authentic bullets to shoot in original and reproduction Civil War cap and ball revolvers; his search led him to check into the possibility of having a company make him custom molds.
Hubbs’ quest led to some interesting results. He quickly discovered that “set up fees for custom molds are expensive, so to get the single mold I required, I had to buy at least 30 from a prominent mold maker to make the project affordable.” His plan was to contract for the thirty, keep one for himself, give one to his friend who did the design and sell the rest to cover the cost. He posted his plan on the Black Powder Revolver Enthusiast Facebook page, received an enthusiastic response, and chose “Eras Gone” for a company name.
While Hubbs started out with six-gun slugs, his latest product is a mold to cast a historically correct Smith carbine bullet. The Smith bullet is .518 in diameter, weighs 354 grains, and features the rounded top band of the original projectile.
You can view the Eras Gone By bullet selection, which includes .44 caliber Johnson and Dow, .31 caliber Baby Dragoon, .36 caliber Richmond Laboratory, and .36 caliber Colt designs at his website: http://erasgonebullets. webstarts.com/?fbclid=IwAR
by Joe Bilby
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Eras Gone By molds are $65 each postpaid for United States sales. The company ships overseas as well for additional shipping cost and has sold to shooters in the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Canada Spain, France, Serbia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. The molds are made by Lee Precision and come complete with handles. Orders are processed through Bonanza, a sales platform like eBay. https://www.bonanza.com/booths/ Eras_Gone_Bullets.
As many of you are aware, my part time retirement job is as Assistant Curator of the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey in Sea Girt. I recently received an information request from an arms historian in Denmark regarding a Bofors anti-tank gun in our collection. The provenance of the gun was shaky; one account had it donated by a VFW post that received it as World War II surplus and used it as a lawn ornament. My inquirer, to whom I supplied photos, posited that it might have been sold by the Danish government to Val Forgett. And that point brought back some memories.
Back in the day, as they say, the day being the late 1950s, I was a high school kid living in Newark, N.J. I was also an avid history, outdoors, and firearms buff. My friend Johnny Sause’s father used to take us on party boat fluke fishing expeditions, so it fell to my father to bring us to that iconic surplus gun mecca, Service Armament, located at 8 East Fort Lee Road in Bogota, N.J.
To a military history nerd like me, Service Armament, lodged in a huge warehouse, was a wonderland. There were cannon all over the floor, as well as antitank guns, Gatling guns, mortars, and rocket launchers; the small arms for sale ranged from the 19th century to World War II. Val Forgett, the founder of the company, traveled far and wide to purchase his stock, and it was for sale— cheap. A World War I era British Number 1 Mark III rifle could be yours for $14.95, and 100 rounds of .303 ammunition to go with it would set you back $7.50.
You could buy a Model 1875 Gatling gun for $5,000, a Model 1900 Gatling gun for $1,250, a 12-pounder bronze Civil War smoothbore cannon for $4,000, and a British anti-tank gun for $250. In those days, you could simply pay the man and roll your cannon out the door. Service Armament also had a large selection of machine guns, but unless they were deactivated, you needed a federal license to purchase them.
You can sample those glory days of yore by purchasing a reprint copy of the 1958 Service Armament catalog, one of a myriad of classic gun catalogs available from Cornell Publications, which describes itself as providing “collectors and enthusiasts with a source of period correct, reprinted original material to help them better understand and evaluate their firearms.” The firm offers reprints of over 6,000 old catalogs, printed to your order. If you are interested in the Cornell list, check it out at their website: https://www.cornellpubs.com/index.php.
Civil War era shooters and reenactors interested in handguns are familiar with the Early and Modern Firearms (EMF) and Pietta companies. EMF developed into a sort of bifurcated entity, starting with imported percussion revolvers and reproductions of the Model 1873 Colt Single Action Army cartridge gun intended to appeal to the Cowboy Action Shooting market. They later evolved into a business selling more modern designs as well. Pietta is well known for its percussion handguns, and the EMF traditional revolvers were manufactured by Pietta in its factory at Gussago, Italy. Now both companies are one as Pietta has purchased EMF. According to Pietta, “the decision to purchase and partner with EMF was based on the goals of the Pietta brothers to increase their overall brand presence within the United States as well as increase the company’s retail distribution, all while maintaining a lower and more competitive price point.”
(This story contains updated information about Hugh Logan, one of Jeb Stuart’s scouts for the October 1862 Chambersburg Raid that refutes a newspaper account of his death in the war.)
Just days after President Lincoln met with Major General George McClellan on Oct. 3, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Md., to urge Union pursuit of the Confederate Army after the bloody September clash along Antietam Creek, Robert E. Lee ordered Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart to invade Pennsylvania and gather information, horses, supplies, and disrupt the Union Army’s railroad supply route.
It was a reprise of Stuart’s June “Ride Around McClellan” outside Richmond in June that gave Lee, who had just taken command of the Southern forces, the information he needed to launch the attack that would end the Union’s Peninsula Campaign designed to capture Richmond.
Stuart’s cavalry had not been directly involved at Antietam and thus missed the War’s highest total casualty count for one day. The cavalry, along with a small infantry force, was assigned to protect Confederate artillery during the battle. Afterward, Stuart was charged with protecting the Potomac River crossings from Union cavalry between Harper’s Ferry, Va., and Hancock, Md. There were numerous skirmishes, but no large-scale action.
Although McClellan showed no signs of pursuing the Confederate Army immediately after Sharpsburg, General Lee was interested in disrupting the Union’s resupplying its army. He already knew the Union government had established a circuitous railroad route to deliver ammunition and other armaments much quicker than normal wagon trains. Ordnanceladen railroad cars traveled from Washington City to Baltimore, then to Harrisburg, Penn., where they were transferred to the Cumberland Valley Railroad for delivery to Hagerstown, Md., not far from Sharpsburg.
Chambersburg, Penn., was a major link in the Cumberland Valley system, so Lee decided to send Stuart to disrupt, if not totally destroy, the railroad there. One of the main targets was the railroad bridge over Conococheague Creek near Chambersburg. The Union army also maintained a large distribution center for supplies at Chambersburg. Along the way, Stuart’s men would capture horses and a limited number of local officials to be used as part of an exchange system. Lee issued orders that pillaging civilian properties was not be allowed.
Stuart’s cavalry was bivouacked at the Bower, a large plantation in western Virginia near the Potomac River. Like he did before the June ride, he gave his troopers little time to prepare for another 100-mile round trip. The 1,500-hundred man contingent left early in the morning of Oct. 9 and was across the river before the fog lifted. Once again, he lined up the services of two scouts who knew the route, both coming and going.
In the June ride around McClellan, Stuart enlisted the aid of two troopers from Virginia’s New Kent County to guide his party of 1,200 around the Union army east of Richmond This time, Stuart tapped two brothers from Franklin County, Penn., and another scout who was born in Poolesville, Md., to make sure he didn’t get lost. The Logan brothers, Alexander and Hugh, helped guide Stuart into Pennsylvania and Chambersburg, the county seat of Franklin County. Both were Southern sympathizers. Hugh was the most gregarious of the brothers and greeted those he knew when the column arrived in town.
Hugh Logan, born in 1825, survived the war with his obituary listing him as a captain in the Confederate army. Alexander’s obituary claimed no association with the military. Another brother, Daniel, had captured John E. Cook, a member of John Brown’s 1859 raiding party who escaped during the government counterattack on the Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry but had moved to California by 1862.
Captain Benjamin Stephen White was one of Stuart’s numerous aides. Before the war, he had been a shopkeeper in Poolesville. His knowledge of that area allowed Stuart to barely escape back into Virginia using a little-known shortcut leading to White’s Ford on the Potomac just above Leesburg. From there, the cavalrymen crossed the Blue Ridge through Snickers Gap and returned to the Bower. Stuart reported to General Lee and had just returned to his command when Union forces started to move into Virginia.
In Chambersburg, Hugh Logan recognized and had a conversation with Alexander K. McClure, the editor of the local newspaper and former State Delegate who was a fiery abolitionist. A lawyer, he also had successfully defended Hugh in a kidnapping case. That probably helped save McClure from becoming one of Stuart’s prisoners. Another might be the fact that the Southern horses enjoyed McClure’s corn field while their masters drank coffee, ate bread, and smoked cigars inside his farmhouse. The raiders also left with 10 of McClure’s horses.
Years later, McClure was quoted in a newspaper article as saying that despite the interval of torrents of rain, the work of replenishing the Confederate army with boots and clothing, arms and ammunition from the town’s public warehouses and private stores went on without intermission.
No outrages were committed and no property was destroyed in mere wantonness. In the main the attention of Stuart’s cavalry was directed toward the horse stalls of the farmers and the stables throughout Franklin County were swept of all the best animals they contained.
Many southern riders helped themselves at warehouses that contained uniforms, equipment, and weapons. One report said they appropriated 700 muskets, 400 pistols, and 468 boxes of ammunition. Many of the boys left with new boots. The railroad depot house was burned, along with the warehouses and roundhouse. The bridge over the creek escaped destruction, apparently because the raiders believed local reports that it was made of iron. The wooden structure was burned during the Gettysburg campaign in 1863.
Hugh and his wife, Mary Laurette Martin Logan, already had seven children when the war started, two girls and five boys. Hugh lived until 1898 and is buried in Woodstock, Va., along with his wife, who died in 1915.
Hugh was reported by the New York Herald on Jan. 1, 1864, as having been captured in Woodstock, Va. The Cleveland Plain Dealer said that Logan was surprised while eating at the home of a farmer and made an attempt to escape. He was wounded by a pistol ball and gave himself up. The Trenton State Gazette said he was wounded in the right arm and thigh. The paper called him a “regular outlaw” and deemed his capture as being of great importance. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in its Oct. 10, 1915, edition, quoting McClure, that Hugh Logan had been killed in one of
“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
The joke in the heading about tea and coffee was credited to Abraham Lincoln who might have retold it but he did not come up with it. While Lincoln was a tea drinker, this one was an old joke by the time he was in office; a version of the same joke also appeared in the London magazine PUNCH, but the earliest recorded use was in the published notes of the 1853 Massachusetts constitutional convention. Henry Laurens Dawes used the tea/coffee joke to set up a political debate with the Whigs over some legislation, so perhaps it was an old joke even then.
Coffee and tea were both immensely popular hot beverages during the antebellum era. Tea was the original “favorite” when America was a collection of British colonies; however, in the early-to-mid 1770s it became somewhat un-patriotic to enjoy tea to the same degree as before. South American coffee (mostly from Brazil) gained a foothold and consumption continued to rise. It increased fivefold from 1790 to 1860; by that time three pounds of coffee were imported for every one pound of tea. This figure is somewhat deceiving in that a pound of tea produces more cups of brewed beverage than a pound of coffee, but the point is the same.
Tea lost its dominance as America’s favorite hot beverage to coffee and the gap between them would only get wider as time went on. In fact, the rise of coffee over tea was a worldwide phenomenon during the nineteenth century. The key to the success of coffee and tea was at least partially in the smell, appearance, and taste, but more importantly, the stimulating effects from the caffeine contained in both.
To better understand substitutes, it is important to understand what was consumed to begin with. In other words, what kind of tea(s) did Americans in the antebellum Southern states drink? How much did availability change with the Civil War? What kinds of substitutes were in use and when? How were they different? Beginning with tea, New York dominated importation to antebellum America. In June 1860, the Southern port of New Orleans listed six million dollars in coffee imports, but no tea. Negligible amounts may have come in through other ports, but the vast majority of imported tea made the voyage from China to New York. Different varieties of green tea were commonly imported to America before the Civil War. According to Shelley and Bruce Richardson in A Tea for all Seasons (Benjamin Press, Perryville, KY 1996), the tea initially enjoyed antebellum and in the early years of the Civil War was most likely made from
…a green tea called Gunpowder. Gunpowder has the best keeping quality of any tea made. It consists of a tightly rolled green leaf. Because of its long life, it was one of the first teas exported for the long clipper ship ride to the Americas…it was lighter and easier to store making it the favorite of frontiersmen and soldiers.
India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) are the largest tea exporters today, but these areas were not large tea producers during the 1860s; Japanese imports to America were only a fraction of what the Chinese shipped out until much later in the 19th century. Varieties of China black teas were, of course, in evidence, but they were less common than today.
If you want to try an antebellum “common” tea, one of the green teas is a good choice. Tea was mostly loose leaf, compressed or in pellet form, and not sold in individual “tea bags” until the early twentieth century. Around the early twentieth century, black tea served over ice started to become a popular beverage. There were receipts (recipes) for iced green teas dating back to George Washington’s time as President, but these contained liquor and were called “tea punches.”
South Carolina is the first place in the United States where tea was grown as early as 1795; it is the only state that produced tea commercially. In America during the mid-19th century, tea was usually enjoyed as a hot beverage and served much like coffee. The majority of modern tea exported from India/Sri Lanka is a mixture of black teas; whether served hot or cold, they taste nothing like the Chinese green tea of the 1860s. Loose leaf or gunpowder Chinese green tea is an acquired taste, and
