Ordnance Manuscript items-47 photos

[cannonmn]

I spent this afternoon in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room going through parts of the John A. Dahlgren papers, in all some 10,000 items. In four hours I got through only a few boxes, and didn't find anything of immense value to my current projects, but there were a number of items of general interest. I photograph items I think are interesting for one reason or another, but this works out to a very small percentage of the items I flip through. Today's "take" included the 47 or so items in this slideshow, but on more productive days I've come home with as many as 600 photos.

Topics shown here include Merrill Firearms, Hotchkiss & Co., Col. Elmer Ellsworth, Tredegar Foundry, Mr. Sigourney, Mr. Ketchum, CSS RICHMOND, New York units quartered at the Washington Navy Yard, casting cannons, Dahlgren's rifled cannons, Krupp Co., turrets for MONITOR, CAPT. Franklin Buchanan, and more. I like the old printed letterheads, which accounts for photos of some otherwise unimportant documents. Dahlgren was a very thorough person, and seemed to have saved every piece of paper he ever handled, even down to saving every envelope the letters came in-they are all in the collection.

Remember you can stop the slideshow and enlarge any of the items you want to look at more closely. If it still isn't enlarged enough, of course you can download the full-sized image and zoom in on it with any photo program.

http://s17.photobucket.com/albums/b62/cannonmn/miscforumsetc/forums26/?action=view&current=a06c9615.pbw

[cannonmn]

Here's one of the items from the slideshow, the Hotchkiss test target fired Nov. 12, 1860, using Hotchkiss' patent projectiles and their little test cannon.  I wonder where that cannon is now?  The barrel would only have been about two feet long, bore 2.5 in., weight 300 lbs.  That's pretty good shootin', nine rounds within about a 5-foot circle at 600 yards.  I suspect the 3-inch ordnance rifles that did so well at counterbattery fire, were using Hotchkiss projectiles.