freemindstuck
04-01-2015, 03:51 PM
Hi guys and gals,
Last weekend I got the opportunity to hunt some of the 1846 battle site for the Battle of Nauvoo just outside of Nauvoo Illinois. Bob Baxter organized most of it , and got permission from the various land owners. We had an archeologist, Paul Debarthe and a historian. The artifacts will end up being displayed at the Nauvoo Museum. In retrospect I should have taken more pictures of the finds but I'll try and describe them anyways. We found something like 40 musket balls of various calibers. Grape shot from a canon. A few buttons, some musket parts and spent percussion caps. A couple of Indian heads from 1832 and 1833. Bit's of lead ingots and various other whatsit's and bits. Some historians claim that the battle of Nauvoo never happened so hopefully we helped clarify some history.
-Adrian
46430
Bob holding a couple of canon balls
46431
46432
46433
That's my buddy Steve in the background curious as to what I've found. lol
46434
Here is one of the articles written up about the hunt in a local newspaper.
'Walking around in history': Volunteers search Nauvoo for metal reminders of 1846 battleBy DEBORAH GERTZ HUSAR
Staff Writer | 217-221-3379 (tel:217-221-3379)
dhusar@whig.com | @DHusarWHIG (http://www.whig.com/DHusarWHIG)
NAUVOO, Ill. -- With headphones on, Adrian Rolfe trudged across the farm field slowly moving his metal detector from side to side. The machine's beeps hinted at what lurked beneath the surface of a one-time battlefield.
"You never exactly know what you have until you dig it," said Rolfe, who lives in Lamoni, Iowa, and spends probably 2,000 hours a year metal detecting. "Hopefully it's something good, not just trash."
At a certain sound, he stopped to dig a shallow hole, this time unearthing a beer can. Another wave of sound, distinctive because of its up-and-down change in pitch, yielded an 1840s musket ball, another tell-tale sign of the Nauvoo site's past.
"It's just unbelievable what's left in the ground," said Earl Walrath from Keokuk, Iowa, working nearby with another metal detector. "It's a thrill to find something."
The men bag each find, from musket balls to coins, then place a red flag at the spot. Other volunteers record the GPS coordinates of the flags to map the sites, while Rolfe and Walrath move on across the field searching Sunday afternoon for more bits of the past.
"I do actually feel like I'm walking around in history," Rolfe said. "It's kind of like you know a secret that nobody else does."
Sites on Nauvoo's eastern and southern edges turned into a battlefield in September 10-16, 1846 in another wave of anti-Mormon sentiment.
"The main body of the Mormons had left in the (February 1846) exodus, with the remainder left in Nauvoo to dispose of property, furniture, artifacts, but there was a group very much anti-Mormon from the surrounding areas. They called them the Carthage Grays, a militant group, and there was another group in the LaHarpe area," said Bob Baxter, who helped spearhead the weekend's effort with up to a dozen volunteers at times to dig into the site's past. "They were so anti-Mormon that they wanted to wipe out all remaining Mormons left in Nauvoo. They marched to Nauvoo with cannons and muskets. The Mormons tried to defend themselves, and just east of Nauvoo they had a battle." The roughly 200 Mormons, along with other Nauvoo residents, faced some 2,500 anti-Mormon forces drawn from surrounding counties.
Archaeologist Paul DeBarthe, who has done work in Nauvoo since 1971, said the Mormons did not have a cannon, and historical documents show they took material from a steamboat and fabricated a cannon so they could fire back.
"They shot at each other across the valley for a day or so, then shot at each other across this field for a couple of days," DeBarthe said.
A cluster of red flags, marking finds by Rolfe and Walrath, indicated a battle hot spot.
"We found probably eight or 10 pieces right here in this little area. You might think there was a tree here, somebody standing behind a tree and they were shooting back. That's how they put a lot of the stories together. They find things like this, a concentration in one area and figure there must have been something here," Walrath said.
"The stuff that we found and the locations that we found it really helps to give a much better understanding of the Battle of Nauvoo in September of 1846, both the Mormon and the anti-Mormon sides and movements of the people," historian Joseph Johnstun said. "This was the end of Nauvoo for roughly 30 years. The Mormons never forgot it. They created songs out in Utah ... to forget not the courage of Nauvoo."
Three Mormons died in the conflict from cannon shot -- Capt. William Anderson of the Nauvoo Legion Spartan Band and his son along with another man, David Norris -- while the anti-Mormon forces were rumored to have lost one man with others, including Capt. Robert F. Smith of the Carthage Grays, suffering serious injuries.
"He put his head through a notch of a tree, scoping the Mormon positions, and was apparently too close to the line," Johnstun said. "A Mormon sharpshooter took a bead on him, shot him through the neck but somehow missed his throat, his spinal column and his arteries. It was a life-threatening injury, of course, but he survived and went on to become a general in the Civil War."
Baxter's family once owned part of the site, and his great-grandfather and grandfather found two six-pound cast iron cannon balls now displayed by the Nauvoo Historical Society.
"It's amazing to me how a little more than a year ago very few people in Nauvoo ever heard of or knew anything about the Battle of Nauvoo," Baxter said.
A passing mention by one of the property owners about the battle triggered an interest, Baxter said, that "mushroomed to what we have today. Once we get a little bit of information, we want more and more."
Explorations will continue for at least another year, with an 80-acre field slated for this fall after harvest. Any artifacts found belong to the property owners but could be put on public display.
"We're going to be pushing for a plaque, a monument of some sort to commemorate the very significant chunk of history," DeBarthe said. "It's interesting that we still don't like to talk our way through things. We like to shoot each other. I hope we could learn some lessons from this in how to work things out in peace."
Last weekend I got the opportunity to hunt some of the 1846 battle site for the Battle of Nauvoo just outside of Nauvoo Illinois. Bob Baxter organized most of it , and got permission from the various land owners. We had an archeologist, Paul Debarthe and a historian. The artifacts will end up being displayed at the Nauvoo Museum. In retrospect I should have taken more pictures of the finds but I'll try and describe them anyways. We found something like 40 musket balls of various calibers. Grape shot from a canon. A few buttons, some musket parts and spent percussion caps. A couple of Indian heads from 1832 and 1833. Bit's of lead ingots and various other whatsit's and bits. Some historians claim that the battle of Nauvoo never happened so hopefully we helped clarify some history.
-Adrian
46430
Bob holding a couple of canon balls
46431
46432
46433
That's my buddy Steve in the background curious as to what I've found. lol
46434
Here is one of the articles written up about the hunt in a local newspaper.
'Walking around in history': Volunteers search Nauvoo for metal reminders of 1846 battleBy DEBORAH GERTZ HUSAR
Staff Writer | 217-221-3379 (tel:217-221-3379)
dhusar@whig.com | @DHusarWHIG (http://www.whig.com/DHusarWHIG)
NAUVOO, Ill. -- With headphones on, Adrian Rolfe trudged across the farm field slowly moving his metal detector from side to side. The machine's beeps hinted at what lurked beneath the surface of a one-time battlefield.
"You never exactly know what you have until you dig it," said Rolfe, who lives in Lamoni, Iowa, and spends probably 2,000 hours a year metal detecting. "Hopefully it's something good, not just trash."
At a certain sound, he stopped to dig a shallow hole, this time unearthing a beer can. Another wave of sound, distinctive because of its up-and-down change in pitch, yielded an 1840s musket ball, another tell-tale sign of the Nauvoo site's past.
"It's just unbelievable what's left in the ground," said Earl Walrath from Keokuk, Iowa, working nearby with another metal detector. "It's a thrill to find something."
The men bag each find, from musket balls to coins, then place a red flag at the spot. Other volunteers record the GPS coordinates of the flags to map the sites, while Rolfe and Walrath move on across the field searching Sunday afternoon for more bits of the past.
"I do actually feel like I'm walking around in history," Rolfe said. "It's kind of like you know a secret that nobody else does."
Sites on Nauvoo's eastern and southern edges turned into a battlefield in September 10-16, 1846 in another wave of anti-Mormon sentiment.
"The main body of the Mormons had left in the (February 1846) exodus, with the remainder left in Nauvoo to dispose of property, furniture, artifacts, but there was a group very much anti-Mormon from the surrounding areas. They called them the Carthage Grays, a militant group, and there was another group in the LaHarpe area," said Bob Baxter, who helped spearhead the weekend's effort with up to a dozen volunteers at times to dig into the site's past. "They were so anti-Mormon that they wanted to wipe out all remaining Mormons left in Nauvoo. They marched to Nauvoo with cannons and muskets. The Mormons tried to defend themselves, and just east of Nauvoo they had a battle." The roughly 200 Mormons, along with other Nauvoo residents, faced some 2,500 anti-Mormon forces drawn from surrounding counties.
Archaeologist Paul DeBarthe, who has done work in Nauvoo since 1971, said the Mormons did not have a cannon, and historical documents show they took material from a steamboat and fabricated a cannon so they could fire back.
"They shot at each other across the valley for a day or so, then shot at each other across this field for a couple of days," DeBarthe said.
A cluster of red flags, marking finds by Rolfe and Walrath, indicated a battle hot spot.
"We found probably eight or 10 pieces right here in this little area. You might think there was a tree here, somebody standing behind a tree and they were shooting back. That's how they put a lot of the stories together. They find things like this, a concentration in one area and figure there must have been something here," Walrath said.
"The stuff that we found and the locations that we found it really helps to give a much better understanding of the Battle of Nauvoo in September of 1846, both the Mormon and the anti-Mormon sides and movements of the people," historian Joseph Johnstun said. "This was the end of Nauvoo for roughly 30 years. The Mormons never forgot it. They created songs out in Utah ... to forget not the courage of Nauvoo."
Three Mormons died in the conflict from cannon shot -- Capt. William Anderson of the Nauvoo Legion Spartan Band and his son along with another man, David Norris -- while the anti-Mormon forces were rumored to have lost one man with others, including Capt. Robert F. Smith of the Carthage Grays, suffering serious injuries.
"He put his head through a notch of a tree, scoping the Mormon positions, and was apparently too close to the line," Johnstun said. "A Mormon sharpshooter took a bead on him, shot him through the neck but somehow missed his throat, his spinal column and his arteries. It was a life-threatening injury, of course, but he survived and went on to become a general in the Civil War."
Baxter's family once owned part of the site, and his great-grandfather and grandfather found two six-pound cast iron cannon balls now displayed by the Nauvoo Historical Society.
"It's amazing to me how a little more than a year ago very few people in Nauvoo ever heard of or knew anything about the Battle of Nauvoo," Baxter said.
A passing mention by one of the property owners about the battle triggered an interest, Baxter said, that "mushroomed to what we have today. Once we get a little bit of information, we want more and more."
Explorations will continue for at least another year, with an 80-acre field slated for this fall after harvest. Any artifacts found belong to the property owners but could be put on public display.
"We're going to be pushing for a plaque, a monument of some sort to commemorate the very significant chunk of history," DeBarthe said. "It's interesting that we still don't like to talk our way through things. We like to shoot each other. I hope we could learn some lessons from this in how to work things out in peace."