"Probably the rarest and most valuable private collection of war relics from the battlefields of the Civil War is that owned by Professor J. Howard Wert. Gettysburg was his home and he was there during the great decisive battle, acting as a guide to the Union forces and doing other patriotic work…….There are many things that are seldom found in similar collections…."
New York Herald, March 27, 1910
As the Battle of Gettysburg came to a close, local residents wandered from their houses and cellars to find the town and surrounding fields littered with tons of debris and equipment left by the departing armies. Many began picking through this detritus, and in the days, months, and years to come, there evolved six major relic collections assembled by Gettysburg residents and their families. These were the Wert, Rosensteel, Ziegler, Danner, Shields, and Lee's Headquarter collections, which came to be known as the Gettysburg "Big Six" among national Civil War relic collectors.
Perhaps the most intriguing of these was the collection assembled by J. Howard Wert, for reasons suggested in the New York quotation above. Wert had experienced the battle as an army scout and had moved around the field with the troops during the fight and its immediate aftermath. Moreover, he had made a habit of dating his "battlefield pickups" and generally took great care in tagging them with inscriptions showing which part of the field they came from.
In this day and age, the J. Howard Wert collection is the last of the "Big Six" to remain in private hands, largely intact. [The Rosensteel collection became the basis of the Gettysburg National Military Park exhibit, and the Ziegler, Danner, Shields, and Lee's Headquarter collections have long since been dispersed.] As it is unlikely that the remaining collection will ever be broken up, we feel privileged to be able to offer our clientele a small selection of pieces from this precious grouping. Given the significance of the Wert collection, customers should be mindful of its history, which runs as follows:
At the time of the Gettysburg campaign, twenty-two year-old John Howard Wert was living at "Wolfe's Walk", a family farm located two and a half miles south of town on the Baltimore Pike. His forbears had moved into the Cumberland Valley following the Revolution, and by the early decades of the 19th century the Werts had become quite prosperous, and highly prominent in Adams County affairs. Young Wert himself a promising young man, recently graduated from Gettysburg's Pennsylvania College. Already embarked on a career in teaching he shared his family's abolitionist views, and, not surprisingly, had become a member of the local border defense unit, the Adams Rifles.
When the rebels headed north in early summer 1863, Wert and his Adams Rifle comrades were employed in scouting Lee's advance into Chambersburg. When the action moved to Gettysburg, Wert acted as an army guide throughout the fight. The men of Gen. John Reynolds' Union First Corps made their way through the streets of Gettysburg with his assistance. Later that day when Gen. Lee's Confederates forced the Union retreat through town, Wert once again provided his assistance in conducting them back to Cemetery Hill. He was also prevailed upon to guide soldiers to protect the Union's barely protected left flank at Little Round Top, and steered reinforcements to the Cemetery Ridge line on July 3 to assist in repelling the Confederate assault known as Pickett's Charge. It should be noted that J. Howard was not the only Wert to assist the Union army. Older family members had reviewed maps with Generals Slocum and Geary, pointing out important land formations.
By the time the armies marched away, the town of Gettysburg and adjacent fields had become - to borrow author Greg Coco's title phrase - "A Vast Sea of Misery." As the town moved into its hospital phase, the Werts joined other Gettysburgians in becoming caught up in caring for the wounded, their Aunt Katie in particular.
Meanwhile, J.H. Wert continued to perform a variety of humanitarian tasks, which included guiding visitors around the battlefield in search of the graves of fallen relatives. He seems to have been constantly out on field from July 5th on, observing and taking note of the devastation on all sides, including, of course, the bloated and decomposing. Wert's recollections from late summer 1863 figure prominently in A STRANGE AND BLIGHTED LAND, author Greg Coco's highly regarded study of the Gettysburg aftermath. Most telling is Wert's Culp's Hill sighting of the mangled and shredded remains of soldier laying on the flat rock where the 29th Pennsylvania regiment presently sits. Among the bone and body part fragments were broken shards of a daguerreotype photo, which had prompted Wert to wonder "…what aching heart of wife, or mother, or child in distant home, they represented."
Wert retained these Culp's Hill photo fragments, thereafter preserving those relics or souvenirs he recovered or had given to him, becoming a custodian of the detritus of the battle. This practice dovetailed with the family habit of preserving relics connected with the anti-slave "Underground Railroad". What was unusual, in comparison with other to other Gettysburg relic collections of the time, was the conscientious and systematic manner in which Wert went about tagging and cataloguing his specimens. He continued these Gettysburg battle relic explorations well into 1864, the year in which he became a soldier himself, enlisting that September as a Sergeant in Co. "G", 209th PA. Infy.
The 209th PA served at the Bermuda One Hundred through November 1864, and then in the Petersburg trenches through remainder of the war, taking part in the final pursuit leading to Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Mustered out May 31, 1865, the regiment had lost 19 men killed and wounded, and 20 by disease. Their sergeant from Gettysburg had been promoted to 1st Sergeant in January 1865 and commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in February.
Returning home, Wert began a career as a school administrator, becoming principal of Gettysburg High School in 1866, and then superintendent of the Adams County school system in 1869. He also became a Grand Army of the Republic activist and was one of the founders of the Corporal Skelly Post, Number 9, G.A.R. Then in the mid-seventies he accepted an appointment as principal of Harrisburg High School, and removed to the capital city, where he became associated with G.A.R. Post 58.
Through the turn of century and beyond, Wert corresponded with a number of Gettysburg notables, including famed mapmaker John Batchelder. He entertained others such as General Dan Sickles during reunion visits to Gettysburg. While attending to his vast Gettysburg relic collection, which was housed in a handsome three story Harrisburg Townhouse, Wert lectured widely and wrote a number of books, including A COMPLETE HAND-BOOK OF THE MONUMENTS AND INDICATION AS AND GUIDE TO THE POSITIONS OF THE GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELD.
Prominent in his writings was a series of sketches written for the Harrisburg Telegraph during the 1913 Gettysburg 50th anniversary ceremonies. Wert began his final sketch with the following reference to his famed collection…. "As these lines are penned, from the walls around, cartridge box and cap-box, bayonet and sword, canteen and canister; with a hundred other relics gleaned fifty years ago from the fields and woods of Gettysburg, look mutely down upon the writer and vividly recall…[the] noble, stalwart men, some garbed in blue and some in gray, who had bravely fought and had fallen for the flag they followed."
Such were the sentiments of the young army scout grown old as he sat writing among relics picked up in the aftermath of those dreadful July days of long ago. Very possibly sitting on his desk was the same box- tin - bullet grouping and identifying tag that is offered in the selection below: "A large tin case of cartridge box containing 50 bullets [of which only 13 remain] of various kinds, all picked up by J. Howard, at various point along the line of "Longstreet's Grand Assault," commonly spoken of as "Pickett's Charge," at various times between July 4th and 12th, 1863…These bullets are from Ziegler's Grove, the positions of the 1st Delaware, 14th Connecticut, the "High Water Mark", and the positions of the Brigades of Webb, Hall, and Harrow, and the Codori Farm across which Pickett's Men charged."
A much honored and revered Gettysburg collector, J. Howard Wert passed away in 1920.
When viewing the collection you will note that some items are accompanied by a tag which denotes the location of their recovery on the Gettysburg battlefield. A number of items, however, exhibit numbered tags which through the inventory system Wert devised, would correlate to a Gettysburg battlefield recovery location as listed in his log book. The previous owner of the collection, an older gentleman, has misplaced this log book. He and his family are currently conducting a search. If the log book is found, The Horse Soldier will contact each individual who purchased one of these numbered items and inform them where their piece was recovered. In some cases, the location of recovery may increase the value of the item in question.
The Small family and the staff of The Horse Soldier are pleased to make available this outstanding and historic group of items from one of the earliest documented Gettysburg collections.
(R18363) $500.00
(R18364) $200.00
With the grouping are two tags, one handwritten in black ink and underlined in red ink and one that appears to be written later in blue ink. The tag reads:
Relics of Battle of Gettysburg A Large tin case of cartridge e box containing 50 bullets , of various kinds, all picked up by J.Howard Wert, of various points along the line of "Longstreet's Grand Assault," commonly spoken of as "Pickett's Charge", at various times between July 4th and 12th, 1863.
These bullets are from Zeigler's Grove, the positions of the 1st Delaware, 14th Connecticut, The "High Water Mark", and the positions of the Brigades of Webb, Hall, and Harrow, and The Codori Farm across which Pickett's men charged.
The tags say 50 bullets but unfortunately only 13 of the 50 remain. All the bullets have very little oxidation and look like they have never been in the ground. They consist of three CS Gardners, one of which is fired, One Georgia Teat base, Two musket balls, three U.S. Minies, one .69 caliber, one pistol and one Sharps.
Tin case of cartridge box found by Edward H. Wert in Death Valley of Culp's Hill, just back of the Union works, Aug, 1885 with 9 battered balls from Ross Farm, Devil's Den, and Round Top, and 3 round balls from same places all picked up August, 1885. Total 13 relics.