This classic Confederate cavalry spur came from an estate sale along the Fairfield Road, scene of a small, but important cavalry fight about six miles southwest of Gettysburg on July 3 that secured the path through the Fairfield Gap at South Mountain for Lee’s supply trains and retreat. The spur is complete, with no bends or breaks, iron rowel intact though missing the tip of one point, and the brass showing a mellow patina with some thin verdigris here and there, but no real corrosion and a few small paint spots, indicating it was battlefield pickup soon after the engagement and spent more than few decades in a local barn or attic.

The is a characteristic “Richmond pattern” spur in its use of flat side bars with squared slots and a straight neck with rounded end, but in this case the entire neck is round in cross-section, a variation called a “Brandy Spur” by Howard Crouch in “Historic American Spurs” from its frequent recovery at the 1863 battlefield of Brandy Station. We also note a very narrow incised line near the tip, with Crouch noting most of the Brandy Spur patterns show rings around the neck. He further dates the style as mid-war, “undoubtedly the product of a large Richmond area production facility” and that “many of these spurs we made and used by the Confederates.” The rowel shows some crudeness or at least some haste in the cutting. There is space enough next to the one point with the tip missing for a tenth point, but the cutter seems to have miscalculated and decided to simply omit it, smooth out the bottom of the cut and move on, with nine points surely doing the job as well as ten, a practical and very typically Confederate solution.

The fight at Fairfield occurred when Wesley Merritt was moving up to Gettysburg from Emmitsburg with elements of his Reserve or Third Brigade of the First Division of the Union army’s cavalry corps and detached the 6^th U.S. Cavalry under Major William Starr to scout Fairfield in search of a reported Confederate wagon train. Starr missed the wagon train, but ran into Confederate cavalry under William E. “Grumble” Jones, who had come up from Chambersburg with the 6^th, 7^th, 11^th Virginia Cavalry and Chew’s battery of horse artillery. Starr formed his men along a ridge and repulsed one cavalry charge by the 7^th Virginia who became jammed up along a road. A second attack by all three Virginia regiments, supported by Chew’s artillery, however, routed him with the loss of some 34 killed and wounded and 208 missing, mostly captured, with Jones losing 8 killed, 21 wounded and 5 missing. It was a small, but key Confederate victory, Jones camped his forces near Fairfield, keeping the road open and later acting as rearguard for the Confederate retreat.

This is a very strong example of a no-doubt-about-it Confederate spur with a solid Gettysburg provenance.  [sr][ph:L]

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