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1878 Blanket Bag Indiana State Militia


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I'm not a SAW collector, (WW1), but saw this on Epay last year and bought it for a reasonable price. What piqued my interest was the IND(Indiana) stencil and the hand inked "EDN,Greenfield Ind." on the back. Since I live in Greenfield In., I thought I would be able to ID this, but no luck so far. Since I have no idea when the inked EDN was added, I knew it was a shot in the dark, but why not! It was described as a blanket bag with shoulder straps and the blanket straps were inside. The bag, shoulder,post-2137-0-54201900-1483561208_thumb.jpgpost-2137-0-60938500-1483561226_thumb.jpgpost-2137-0-54706600-1483561269_thumb.jpg and blanket straps are marked RIA 1911. Were these bags actually used that late? Any information appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The bag is the 1878 pattern blanket bag which I believe was manufactured up until 1902 when a modified version was manufactured. They were later replaced by the 1910 equipment, but I believe they remained in service up to WWI. The bag posted by GWS has the broken "U.S." stencil which is a pre-1900 (not sure of the exact date of the change to the solid stencil).

 

One question that I had is in reference to the "SC" marking. At first, I thought it was for South Carolina, but would the Army re-issue from one state to another? A thought that I had is that this was for the Signal Corps in the Indiana Guard.

 

 

Any thoughts from the field gear experts?

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I took a couple of photos of my blanket bag. Interesting to note that it had been issued to a regular unit prior to it being sent to the Indiana National Guard. This may answer my question about them being reissued to different states after being refurbished.

 

post-203-0-23641400-1484405714.jpg

 

 

This is the underside of the flap:

 

post-203-0-25773700-1484405721_thumb.jpg

 

 

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