"The Search for Corporal Dow"

At last a book has been written to provide the tools and process to uncover the history of an American veteran and his weapons. At a time when interest in genealogy research is at an all-time high, we provide the information about the military records that are available for both veterans and their firearms.

The story of our research of Corporal William H. Dow is provided as an example of the provenance that raised the value of our Sharps rifle strictly due to our research of the Civil War soldier. We greatly enjoyed our research and we believe our readers can do likewise, following the information we have provided in this book.

• Records available from prior to the Revolution to the modern day, both nationally and regionally.
  
  
• The book describes the process for researching the provenance of veterans’ firearms, which of course increase their value, in some cases very substantially.
  
  
• On a state-by-state basis, information available for that state’s veterans, along with the military museums, the web sites on the Internet, the online Civil War Roundtables, and battleground National Parks.
  
  
• Nearly all the firearms bought by the federal government from 1795 to the modern era are listed alphabetically, along with production dates and serial number ranges of those weapons.
  
  
• Insight into the history surrounding older firearms at the battle of the Little Bighorn and at the great Jesse James Northfield bank robbery.
  
  
• Listing of various firearms' manufacturers and the collectors organizations that can provide provenance for weapons produced by a specific manufacturer.
  
  
• Nearly 60 illustrations of these unique weapons are in the book along with their history.
  
  
• Reprint of George Madis’ classic booklet on U S Military Arms – reprinted with permission of the Madis estate.

We'd like to again welcome you to our website and tell you a little about how we got involved in this search for the owner of our Sharps rifle - a man we are not related to, but a man and his family, who, because of all our research, we feel very close to.

Gene had always wanted to own a Sharps rifle and when Linda discovered an ad in the Minneapolis paper one morning the quest began. The man who owned this rifle was selling it so that he could buy bigger carburetors for his speedboat. His father had received the rifle years before from the original owner and the current owner knew nothing about it. He really just wanted the money and that was it.

After managing to buy the rifle before another collector arrived, Gene had his treasure. And now the search began to find out who had owned it and where it had been used.

A local gun dealer told Gene that he had paid too much for the rifle. Feeling a little deflated, Gene nevertheless had picked up the name of a fellow who worked at Historic Fort Snelling in St Paul and who is a Sharps collector. His first inclination was that the rifle could have been used by one of Berdan's Sharpshooters, which, of course, was great news.

Gene and Steve met at Fort Snelling and after examining the rifle, came to the opinion that the rifle had not been issued to Berdan's unit. But the septagon that was embedded in the buttstock was a corps badge. After using a process of restoration of old engraving and stampings called "work hardening" or "cold working", they could see that the inscription read " Wm H Dow CO K U.S.V.V." . And just like that we had the name of the owner of the Sharps.

Now that we had the name and unit of the soldier, the work of uncovering his history began. We were helped by letters from the Wisconsin Veterans Museum telling us that Wm H Dow had served in the 2nd Wisconsin Regiment of the famous Iron Brigade of the West. We spent several Saturday mornings at the Minnesota Historical Society searching thru their archives and found that Cpl Dow had lived in Minneapolis for many years. He had married and lived in Wisconsin and then South Dakota before moving to Minneapolis where he and his wife and their only daughter made their home.

So our search continued on using records from NARA (The National Archives and Records Administration), the Wisconsin Veteran's Museum, the Minnesota Historical Society, ledgers from the Minnesota Old Soldiers Home and the Grand Army of the Republic post that he belonged to, as well as numerous pieces of just plain good luck. There were many people who helped piece together this story and we thank them all.

So that is the quick version of how we discovered, and documented, the history of the Sharps Model 59 that was sold to make a speed boat go faster, yet turned into one of the most fascinating and rewarding journeys we've made.

We encourage you to start your own journey. Our search illustrates just how much can be discovered with a little bit of luck and a lot of hard, but fascinating, work.



Top         Back to Links Pages         Home