the haversack

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: the haversack

Hallo!

Not to be a curmudgeony Stick in the Mud... and please read as a non-negative, non-critical, neutral "what can we learn from this" type of question as to method:

But by what fact, provenance, or association is/was the 1790-1840 dates determined/assigned/invented?

Again not being negative (just that I had seen a P1856 Enfield sabre bayonet listed in a museum as a relic of the 1763 Bradstreet Detroit Relief Expedition.)

Curt

[PogueMahone]

Re: the haversack

Hallo!

Not to be a curmudgeony Stick in the Mud... and please read as a non-negative, non-critical, neutral "what can we learn from this" type of question as to method:

But by what fact, provenance, or association is/was the 1790-1840 dates determined/assigned/invented?

Again not being negative (just that I had seen a P1856 Enfield sabre bayonet listed in a museum as a relic of the 1763 Bradstreet Detroit Relief Expedition.)

Curt

Curt,

I think your question would have to be asked of Historic Bethlehem, Inc. The words/dates are their's.

They were probably speaking of the wallet in their exhibit, dating it based on some observable data that we are not privy to due to the inopportunity to inspect the item personally.

I, too, have wondered about the common usage of the wallet during the CW. I know I've seen references to someone removing or placing an object in/out of a wallet and, not knowing the alternative meaning of the world, wondered how they stuff said object into such a small leather container.

[Abrams]

Re: the haversack

Hallo!

Not to be a curmudgeony Stick in the Mud... and please read as a non-negative, non-critical, neutral "what can we learn from this" type of question as to method:

But by what fact, provenance, or association is/was the 1790-1840 dates determined/assigned/invented?

Again not being negative (just that I had seen a P1856 Enfield sabre bayonet listed in a museum as a relic of the 1763 Bradstreet Detroit Relief Expedition.)

Curt

I am not sure you can even be curmudgeony Curt, you are always a big help here. ;)

Joe is right, I just copied and pasted that info off the website. The collection of Historic Bethlehem Inc. either dated it, or had it dated for them by someone else, I reckon. Since it wound up in a museum setting, I would hope they also tried to verify its authenticity and age. I know mistakes happen though.

[Hank Trent]

Re: the haversack

Has anyone seen proof or heard of the market wallet still in use by the 1860's?

I can get it up to the 1850s. Blackwater Chronicle by Strother shows an illustration of their rural Virginia guide using one on a fishing trip.

Personally, my view is that it was probably "old fashioned" by the 1860s, and is best used in the context of a rural, old fashioned kind of person, but if more common usage is discovered, I'd certainly be glad to be corrected.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[sdwinters]

Re: the haversack

I've seen a pretty clear reference to the use of a market wallet in a recent book containing two escaped slave narratives. Don't recall the title offhand, but I have notes on it at home. The reference was in the first narrative. I believe the date was about 1862. The escaped slave (who was by way of starving) stole food from an unoccupied kitchen, putting chittlins in one end of the wallet and sugar in the other--these being what he could put his hands on quickly. I believe the wallet came from that kitchen as well, and wasn't his.

Sally Gwylan

[sdwinters]

Re: the haversack

My memory got most of it right:
"Then I looked around me and I found a wallet and I put sugar in one end and bread in the other." - "Journal of Wallace Turnage," A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation, by David W. Blight. This was late in 1861.


Sally Gwylan