USS Constellation- Sesquicentennial Exposition

[Netz]

I apologize in advance for the story, but I want to tell it…

 

Sometime around 2013/14 I went to an estate sale in Southern NJ and saw a small box laying amid some older yearbooks (if memory serves me correctly, from Camden City HS dated in the mid-late 1930’s/1940).

 

Anyway, I opened the box and found this pamphlet folded up and wooden cannon inside. I’m surmising the pamphlet separated from itself due to having been folded up and contained in the box for such a long period.

 

I purchased it for virtually next to nothing and set it aside to research. I won’t reiterate what the pamphlet says (included in pics) but I’m fairly certain this hand carved cannon was attained by the visitor at the ship during the U.S. Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia (1926), as research revealed when parts of the ship were in need of replacement, those pieces were made into trinkets to sell to the public.

[aerialbridge]

Great find! And I agree with your supposition of the origin.   It adds up. 

[Netz]

24 minutes ago, aerialbridge said:

Great find! And I agree with your supposition of the origin.   It adds up. 

I’m definitely not saying it was sold by Gimbals Dept. Store though. I’m quite certain it’s only an old box that at some point whoever had the cannon & pamphlet put them in.

[aerialbridge]

Agreed.  Somewhere I have a hand-made wooden desk name plate circa 1941,  triangular cross section, stained and hand painted in gold letters that was made by a 29 year career mustang who was a sail maker's mate 1c before promoting to W.O.  in 1935.  He was forced to retire after a mild stroke in 1949 when he was an LCDR on his first command, a large refrigerated stores ship.   He enlisted  March 1, 1923 at Boston and per his records from NARA, he spent much of the first three years at the Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island, where he was Yard Captain and on the detail assigned to the pre-Civil War sloop USS Constellation. One of his duties was re-rigging the seventy-year-old ship.  Written on it is that it is a piece of the USS Constellation (probably discarded in the overhaul per your information)  that he must have saved.   That jibes well with your pamphlet that shows the ship was being restored at that time.   I think I have a picture of the desk plaque and if I find it or the plaque I'll post here.   Here's the guy in later years, probably early 1960s in Oregon.