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San Jacinto"Twin Sisters" Cannonball 1836

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:250.00 USD Estimated At:500.00 - 1,000.00 USD
San Jacinto Twin Sisters  Cannonball 1836
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With tag that attributes to the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, & was confiscated from the Richmond Arsenal. Cannonball 3" dia. Case 6.25" x 6.25" x 5.25". Reportedly with a “Twin Sisters” Connection, Richmond Armory, Virginia, G.A.R. Post at Hagerstown, Maryland Provenance: This cannonball has interesting attribution. It carries a round G.A.R. medallion identifying it as the property of the G.A.R in Hagerstown, Maryland. The G.A.R.—Grand Army of the Republic—was a fraternal organization composed of Union veterans of the Civil War. It dissolved in August 1956 when the last member passed away. The cardboard medallion says that the cannonball was retrieved by Union forces when they took the Richmond Arsenal in April 1865. It states that the cannonball is associated with one of the famous Texas “Twin Sisters” cannons. The disappearance and ensuing search for these two lost cannons has fueled their notoriety, colloquially referred to as the “Texas Holy Grail.” Relics taken by Union soldiers during the Civil War often ended up in the collections of Civil War memorabilia housed by the individual G.A.R. museums to which the veterans belonged. Each G.A.R. post had its own collection or museum, the relics of which were dispersed as veterans died off in the 1900s and the posts gradually dissolved. The association with the famous Twin Sisters cannons is a great—but unverified—story, worthy of further research. The fate of the two cannons is unknown. One of them may have been stored after the Texas Revolution at the federal ordnance depot at San Antonio, most of the ordnance of which was sent to Richmond early in the Civil War. It is at least conceivable that one of the cannons—along with a supply of munitions to go with it—were part of that shipment.