An early battlefield pick up, once part of the Jennie Wade/Soldiers National Museum C1902. Nice smooth dark olive patina. Nice crude seam mold visible. Museum inventory number 587.

This item was originally part of the Jennie Wade Museum which was a collection of Gettysburg battlefield and battle related relics housed in the small brick house on East Cemetery Hill where Gettysburg civilian Jennie Wade was killed on July 3, 1863. This museum was opened in the 1920’s by former Gettysburg Mayor William G. Weaver. In the 1950’s the building and collection were sold to local businessman L. E. Smith who, along with Hollywood actor Cliff Arquette, ran a company called Gettysburg Tours, Inc.

Arquette, better known by his stage name of Charlie Weaver, opened a museum on the Baltimore Pike that housed his collection of war related artifacts as well as carved wood Civil War soldiers made by Arquette himself. The museum opened in March of 1959 as “CLIFF ARQUETTE’S SOLDIERS MUSEUM.” By the 1960’s Arquette changed the name of the business to “CHARLIE WEAVER’S AMERICAN MUSEUM OF THE CIVIL WAR.” Arquette sold his museum and collection to L. E. Smith who in the 1970’s changed the name to “THE SOLDIER’S NATIONAL MUSEUM.” Smith revamped the Jennie Wade Museum and moved a majority of the artifacts in it to The Soldier’s National Museum. It was at this time that the artifact offered here began its connection with the Soldier’s National Museum where it remained until that repository’s closure in 2014.

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