Arms, Armor and Militaria

29.75" curved single-edged flat backed blade, 1.125" wide at ricasso with a 22" stopped primary fuller and a 14.5" long narrow secondary fuller at the spine. 35.5" in overall length, with a 5.5" hilt. Traditional foliate decorated gilt brass Foot Officer's sword guard with knuckle bow and lightly decorated pommel cap. Grooved wooden grip covered in shagreen with fourteen wraps of multi-strand wire. Blade decorated with 15" of fine frosty etching showing detailed foliate themes with elaborate martial and patriotic motifs. Obverse etched W.H. Horstmann/& Sons in two lines and Philadelphia on the reverse. The sword is accompanied by its gilt brass mounted leather scabbard with the obverse of the upper mount is engraved with the following presentation: Presented to Capt. John S./McDowell by the members/of Co. F 77th Regt. Penn. Vols./as a mark of esteem and/reward for meritorious services/April 1, 1863.

John Sands McDowell (1840-1915) was 21 years old when he enlisted in the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry as a sergeant on October 9, 1861. He was mustered into company F and would fight with this company through the war, rising through the ranks to become the company commander. The 77th Pennsylvania would spend the war fighting in the Western Theater of Operations, initially as part of the Army of the Ohio and eventually as part of the Army of the Cumberland. They would fight in every major and many of the secondary battles in the west from Shiloh to Corinth, Stones River to Chickamauga, the Atlanta Campaign, Franklin and Nashville, to just mention the major ones. McDowell was promoted from sergeant to 2nd lieutenant on April 24, 1862 and then to 1st lieutenant on December 10, 1862 just before the battle of Stones River. On April 11, 1863 he was promoted to captain and company commander, prior to the beginning of the Tullahoma Campaign. McDowell was captured on the night of September 19, 1863 after the second day of the fighting at Chickamauga. He was reconnoitering the Confederate lines that evening when he was captured and his sword taken by Lt. N.Q. Adams of the 27th Mississippi Infantry Regiment. At that time Adams promised to take care of it and return it to McDowell when the war was over. Adams even provided McDowell with his address so the Union captain could contact him after the war. McDowell was subsequently imprisoned in both Macon, GA and Columbia, SC. McDowell was eventually released and officially discharged from the service on March 16, 1865. After the war he moved to Smith County, KS where he was in the dry goods business. He contacted Adams about returning the sword, but the Mississippi officer explained that it had been turned over to his brigade commander and no further information about its location was known. Some 36 years after the event, Charles O Beauchamp the Mayor of Jackson Georgia wrote to William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in April of 1900 and explained that he was in possession of the sword, which he had received from his father. Beauchamp's story about receiving the sword does not quite mesh with McDowell's story of its loss, but as Beauchamp was not even born until 1873 and it is not really clear how his father had acquired (the article says that he had "purchased it") and his father was not the one who had taken it from McDowell, it is not surprising that the stories differ. Beauchamp's goal in writing to the New York Journal was to find McDowell and return the sword to him. The article accomplished just that and in 1900 McDowell's sword was repatriated to him nearly 37 years after its loss.