Horse Pistol: Battlefield Account

[Smokey Plainsman]

Gang I was watching some films on YouTube of elderly peoples being interviewed in 1929. Well an unnamed man started to speak in the video and described his participation in the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Listen to what he has to say from the 1:14 minute mark in the video:

https://youtu.be/0FE30a4J38Q?t=1m14s

He describes how the Union General Nathaniel Lyon was killed by an "old fashioned horse pistol". Being as this battle took place in 1861, it is not surprising that old single shot horse pistols were still in use. As an enthusiast and researcher of such weapons, imagine my surprise to hear this account from an actual Civil War veteran. A very humbling experience to be sure. I own a Pedersoli made Harpers Ferry percussion conversion horse pistol and used to own an original 1842 Aston that I foolishly sold, and one day soon hope to replace.

Just thought you all might be interested in this. What a great collection of films, that we can hear the actual voices of these veterans and their stories is astounding.

Take care!

-Smokey P.

 

[TFoley]

Amazing - that first guy sure had all his marbles, even in what were probably his late eighties.

It really sent shivers up my spine, to hear the voice of a man who had lived through all that time...

Here in UK we have the same deal for veterans of the 2nd Boer War - I'll have to try and find a few for you.

tac

 

[zimmerstutzen]

In 1861, the Feds ordered 600 Lorenz model 1861 horse pistols and issued them to New England cavalry units. They were almost immediately replaced by revolvers when revolver production was up and running. I had an original Lorenz 1861 model but could never find any markings tying it to union forces. European horse pistols had safeties built in. A strange difference from US production.

Thanks so very much for posting this film clip. Not enough of this was done. About 1956 I met a very elderly man who was said to have been a drummer boy near the end of the war. Now that I look back at it, the math did not work out. He might have been born during the war, but I doubt he was old enough to be anything in the services.

 

[tenngun]

We think of these as such past events. So much is in near living memory. The last WTBS soldier died in my life time. My brother would have been old enough to have known him, that man was of an age to have known Robert Lee, whose father fought in the revolution. Just three life’s take us back to the AWI. A man who was apprentice in Boston working on the Constitution would have still been alive when the Monitor spelled the end to wooden walls.
Seeing vids like this is just so impressive when we know that people are alive that knew these speakers.

 

[TFoley]

My grandmother, born in 1890, got a birthday hug in 1897 from an old neighbour. He was passing it on, he said, so that she could pass it on in turn to HER children at the same age. My mom passed it to me, and I to MY daughter, and she did the same to HER daughter.

The origin of the hug was the all-night hug given by a sergeant to a little drummer boy, in the carnage and aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The drummer boy became the old man, and the man who had hugged the injured child all night to keep him warm, and alive, was his own daddy.

tac

 

[smoothshooter]

My great-grandfather died in 1974, I think, and he was just short of 92 at the time, with a good mind to the very last. I was a senior in HS then. I spent lots of time with him, finding out that he knew many Civil War veterans around Stone, Taney, Christian, and Greene counties in SW Missouri where he spent all his life.
I also have been struck by how few degrees of separation in time between generations. Or generational overlaps, as I sometimes call them.

 

[tenngun]

When I first started nursing I worked in a nursing home and had a resident that was near one hundred at the time. She grew up in a hard life, her husband died when her son was eight and her and that son took care of a farm through the depression and dust bowl that droughted Arkansas although not as devastating as Oklahoma.
She remembered the first time she rode in a car, the first time she saw an airplane, she was already an ”˜old lady’ when I was born, and I was a teen before she got electricity.
My grandfather died the year I was born, he worked two winters in Montana as a bear hunter. Not a mountain man but an inheritor of their life. He knew a grand daughter of Joe Meek I was told in family lore.
I snicker when I see a movie from the 90s and the person has a cell phone just a little smaller then a WW2 wakie-Talkie.
Our past was just a few years ago. If you do a family tree you find your self just a few names from important events.

 

[Canute Rex]

Great footage, great stories!

My own grandmother was born in Lynchburg Virginia in 1894 and lived to be 98. Her father was in his fifties when she was born. He was born in 1842 and served in the 45th Virginia. She was desperate for him to tell her war stories but all he would tell her was how he was court martialed for trading his blanket to the Yankees for apple pies. The 45th was stationed on the defenses of Richmond, so I could see how some fraternization developed.

So I'm a handshake away from him. His wife was much younger, but she told my grandmother about her mother baking biscuits and her standing out by the front gate at age 7 or so with an apron full of biscuits. A column of soldiers marched by and each one picked a biscuit out of her apron.

The history of battles and grand strategy is fine, but I love the history of personal details.

 

[John V.]

Gang I was watching some films on YouTube of elderly peoples being interviewed in 1929. Well an unnamed man started to speak in the video and described his participation in the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Listen to what he has to say from the 1:14 minute mark in the video:

https://youtu.be/0FE30a4J38Q?t=1m14s

He describes how the Union General Nathaniel Lyon was killed by an "old fashioned horse pistol". Being as this battle took place in 1861, it is not surprising that old single shot horse pistols were still in use. As an enthusiast and researcher of such weapons, imagine my surprise to hear this account from an actual Civil War veteran. A very humbling experience to be sure. I own a Pedersoli made Harpers Ferry percussion conversion horse pistol and used to own an original 1842 Aston that I foolishly sold, and one day soon hope to replace.

Just thought you all might be interested in this. What a great collection of films, that we can hear the actual voices of these veterans and their stories is astounding.

Take care!

-Smokey P.

My grandfather 1895-1978 would tell my dad stories of his aunts husband who he talked with as a child. He (my granddads Uncle) had been wounded in the foot with a mini-ball at Shiloh. All I know is his name and he was in a Ohio unit. Grandad said his Uncle walked with a limp and a cane brought on by the wound.He is buried with my Great, Great Aunt not far from where I live. Man, how I wish as a child I had sat and talked to my Grandfather.I can only imagine the things he could tell me about my Great,Great,Uncle. I was 14 when he passed so I would have been old enough to understand, but I was a stupid kid. My Great Aunt(1898) was given his powder flask by his widow before she died. My father has it now. I am only 55, but it is amazing to think about in my lifetime people were still around that lived through the war as children.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

rather off topic. I love the old movies and recordings. But most of all, I like seeing the gestures, mannerisms and hearing the speech patterns of famous folks in history. I can just barely remember sitting on my grandmother's lap and seeing Robert Frost recite The road not taken on the today show. A movie of Teddy Roosevelt, or other famous people.