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Post by Diane Merkel on Apr 6, 2006 22:41:43 GMT -6
From a website visitor: I just saw your posting back in January 2005 about the Custer pocket watch being in the Gene Autry Museum. It was made for the Errol Flynn movie They Died With Their Boots On. It is the one that the Foote family had!
There are at least three other watches in existence with the same inscription. All but the one I have were proven to be "Not Authentic."
I have spent many years now trying to document my watch and have not been able to find any record of a watch being presented to Custer. If you know of any documentation I would much appreciate the information!!! There is documentation that a Canadian Mountie (Cecil Denny) collected the pocket watch from Sitting Bull and sent it to Libbie, I think in 1877 or 78.
My watch has several minute engravings on the inside that tell the history of Custer and the swords are shown inverted as Custer and Sheridan both preferred. Because they were Cavalry, fighting from horseback, they thought it more proper to show swords as having the tip pointed down. Does anyone have any additional information that might help him authenticate his pocket watch?
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Post by custerstillstands on Apr 7, 2006 1:29:34 GMT -6
There's a story about Gall who hade Custer's personal watch after the battle... Never seen any pictures of it.
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Post by George Armstrong Custer on Apr 7, 2006 13:44:01 GMT -6
Hi there Diane, Didn't you open a thread on this subject a year or so ago? I seem to remember responding to it by referencing the watch from the Foote collection and the mentions thereof in Son of the Morning Star? Anyway, I can't seem to locate that earlier thread now, so here's an image (below) of the Custer watch which was formerly in the Don and Stella Foote Collection at Billings, Montana. The image is scanned from the back cover of a 1964 brochure of the Foote collection, and the bottom right of the watch was partially overlapped by another image - which I've removed as best I can with my photoshop software. Engraved above the state and crossed sabers insignia is the following: TO GENERAL CUSTER FROM THE MICHIGAN BRIGADE "RIDE YOU WOLVERINES" I'd be very interested to learn something of the provenance for the watch which your current correspondent has? I'd also be interested to know his sources for declaring the watch from They Died With Their Boots On, the one from the Gene Autry Museum, and the one from the Foote collection to be one and the same? And finally, does your correspondent have a source for his statement that both Custer and Sheridan preferred inverted crossed saber cavalry insignia? Ciao, GAC
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Post by Diane Merkel on Apr 9, 2006 21:01:10 GMT -6
GAC,
I do remember something about the watch a year or so ago, but I couldn't find it either. The boards have grown a lot in that time!
Thank you for the photo. I'm sure the watch's owner will check back and answer your questions.
Best wishes, Diane
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Post by George Armstrong Custer on Apr 13, 2006 15:33:02 GMT -6
Interesting stuff, Wolfe! My copy of SOTMS is a first edition, and has no pictures of anything - I presume you refer to later editions having a photograph of the Foote watch? The only picture I'd ever seen of this was the one on the back of the Foote brochure which I posted here - although I did see the watch itself in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1970's when the Foote collection was on a world tour!
Connel refers to the Foote collection watch on pp. 351 - 352, and quotes a provenance dating back to 1906 - but - as with everything else in the book! - does not cite a source for this. I'm surprised, however, given his penchant for gossip, that Connel did not pick up on the story you quote of the Foote watch being sold by Butterfields and acquired by the Autry museum, and instead simply refers to it as having 'dropped from sight' after the Foote collection was broken up.
I note what you say regarding the 1889 book showing Sheridan's flag design with 'saber points down' - but would suggest that the design had simply been published upside down. Certainly Custer's personal flag made by Libbie, and illustrated in the Buterfields catalogue of April 4, 1995, has the sabers pointing up, and hilts to the bottom. If your contention was correct - that the 'down' position was Custer's preference, then I have no doubt but that Libbie would have produced a flag showing them accordingly!
I'd like to hear of a contemporary account of any presentation of a watch to Custer by the Michigan Brigade if anyone knows of one?
Ciao, GAC
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Post by George Armstrong Custer on Apr 14, 2006 7:05:22 GMT -6
Hello Wolfe, As I understand it, you have a watch which you'd like to authenticate as having been Custer's. As your watch apparently shows crossed sabers pointing down, it would obviously help your case if you could establish some documentation that this was Custer's preferred representation of this insignia. Your original statement on this ran as follows:
" My watch has several minute engravings on the inside that tell the history of Custer and the swords are shown inverted as Custer and Sheridan both preferred. Because they were Cavalry, fighting from horseback, they thought it more proper to show swords as having the tip pointed down."
Now, I don't want to rain on your parade just for the sake of it, but facts are facts. So far you haven't come up with a single contemporary statement attributed to either Custer or Sheridan stating that they preferred to see crossed saber insignia represented as inverted. In the absence of such a documented statement, all the other evidence - such as photographs of Custer wearing crossed saber insignia on his cap, and the personal flag made for him by Libbie - argues that Custer either preferred the sabers to be pointing up or, more likely in my opinion, that he had no particular view on this minutiae and simply wore and displayed the crossed saber insignia where apropriate in the 'government issue' mode of sabers pointing up.
Although I can understand why you would want to do so, I'm afraid I find your 'documentation' to support your theory of Custer and Sheridan's preferences to be tenuous in the extreme: #1 You reference pictures from an 1889 book with which Sheridan had no personal connection, but you can supply no quotes from Sheridan to support the conclusions you draw from these pictures. #2 You reference Vinnie Ream Hoxie's bust of Custer, as illustrated on p. 252 of Frost. You infer that the reversed sabers shown on this sculpture must be there on Custer's instructions because he personally modelled for Hoxie. Again, this is sheer speculation upon your part, and a brief examination of the facts surrounding this sculpture casts serious doubt on what you claim. In particular, you seem unaware of the fact that, although Custer had briefly met Hoxie (nee Ream, as she was then), as a precocious young artist at a reception in 1871, he did not in fact sit for her until his last trip to Washington.1 Further, Hoxie was still working on the bust when she corresponded with Libbie about it in 1877, after Custer's reburial at West Point. In particular, Hoxie consulted Libbie on issues such as whether or not she would prefer the bust to depict her husband wearing his buckskins (she didn't, but the finished bust does!).2 Libbie, therefore had more input on the sculpture than Custer himself ever did. As the bust itself was not even made until over a year after Custer's death, it follows that the plinth upon which it rested was made even later. It is this supporting plinth which is decorated (and I emphasise the 'decorated') with inverted crossed sabers with a star placed between them. I'd be very surprised if this decoration was anything more significant than artists licence on Hoxie's part. Yet you cite it as 'documentation' that crossed sabers pointing down was Custer's preference because "they were Cavalry, fighting from horseback, they thought it more proper to show swords as having the tip pointed down."
I'm sorry, my friend, but I'm not buying that leap of supposition on your part! If we're going to seriously try to authenticate your or any other alleged 'Custer watch', we need to try to trace back its provenance. You could begin by telling us how you acquired the watch, who from, and what they were able to tell you of how they came by it - and try to work backwards from there. As I noted earlier, Connel supplies a supposed provenance for the Foote collection watch going back to 1906 - but you haven't commented on this. Nor have you mentioned which edition of SOTMS you say an illustration of the Foote watch was subsequently omitted from.
I'm not having a go at you, but we have to separate verifiable facts from wish-fulfillment!
Ciao, GAC
1 Monaghan, Jay Custer, The Life of General George Armstrong Custer, 1959, pp. 333, 366, 398.
2 Ibid, p. 401-404.
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Post by George Armstrong Custer on Apr 14, 2006 7:47:04 GMT -6
On 4/7/06 Wolfe wrote: "My watch has several minute engravings on the inside that tell the history of Custer and the swords are shown inverted as Custer and Sheridan both preferred. Because they were Cavalry, fighting from horseback, they thought it more proper to show swords as having the tip pointed down."
On 14/7/06 Wolfe wrote: "Anyway, who cares about the sabors!"
Well, you do apparently - or at least as long as the evidence suits your purpose! Oh, and by the way, that's sabers, not sabors.
Finally, you have not produced 3 'documents' which support your assertions, you've put together two illustrations from a book which neither party you reference produced, and the decoration created by an artist for the base of her sculpture.
Maybe someone else here will come along and tell you what you want to hear, but since you're evidently not prepared to even discuss the provenence of your alleged 'Custer watch', I'm afraid I won't be wasting any more time trying to help you. As Scout rightly pointed out on another thread there's been a distinct downturn in attitudes on this forum of late (and not just from central Europe) - a lack of manners being just a symptom of the problem.
GAC
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Post by Tricia on Apr 14, 2006 8:00:33 GMT -6
GAC--
Could the turned-down sabres be an iconographic reference to a death in battle? I notice Wallace's gravestone--on Lawtonka's "test" site--has a similar depiction. Often, lowered torches and the such were standard 19th Century symbols for a life "snuffed (pardon the pun) out ..." Like you, however, I do think quotes, references, and definative provenance would help the watch owner's case ... substantially.
But you are right on about the upturned sabre points. I don't think GAC would carry a personal standard--even if it was fashioned by Libbie--into battle that went against his very deliberate sense of style.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by George Armstrong Custer on Apr 14, 2006 8:30:17 GMT -6
Hi Leyton, Yes indeed - your suggestion makes great sense to me. Linking the reversed sabers on the Wallace tomb with those on the posthumous sculpture of Custer is an insightful explanation as to why they appear in this manner in relation to deceased warriors. Now that you've suggested it, I'd bet money on that being the reason Hoxie depicted them so on the posthumous bust she made for Libbie! I suspect this won't be a welcome hypothesis to our friend Wolfe, however - for if there was a nineteenth-century practise of reversing cavalry saber insignia in reference to fallen cavalrymen (even if this was just an unofficial practice), then it's highly unlikely that the Michigan Brigade would have presented Custer with a watch bearing the symbol of a dead cavalryman!! Which, of course, would make the watch in the possession of Wolfe even more unlikely to be genuine than other examples which have upturned sabers..........
Nice to discuss an issue with one of the 'old guard' who can put forward thoughful ideas in a pleasant way! (And on this I do hope that, like ourselves and others of like mind, Scout will remain with the forum, even though carefully selecting what we get involved in!)
Ciao, GAC
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Post by Diane Merkel on Apr 14, 2006 9:54:10 GMT -6
Note: "Wolfe" has removed his posts.
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Gary
Junior Member
Posts: 81
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Post by Gary on Apr 15, 2006 5:55:12 GMT -6
Note: "Wolfe" has removed his posts. I just found another tidbit of information in regards to the Foote Family Pocketwatch. The Michigan State Symbol that is part of its make up was not adopted until 1911.
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Gary
Junior Member
Posts: 81
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Post by Gary on Apr 15, 2006 6:09:58 GMT -6
GAC-- Could the turned-down sabres be an iconographic reference to a death in battle? I notice Wallace's gravestone--on Lawtonka's "test" site--has a similar depiction. Often, lowered torches and the such were standard 19th Century symbols for a life "snuffed (pardon the pun) out ..." Like you, however, I do think quotes, references, and definative provenance would help the watch owner's case ... substantially. But you are right on about the upturned sabre points. I don't think GAC would carry a personal standard--even if it was fashioned by Libbie--into battle that went against his very deliberate sense of style. Regards, Leyton McLean Actually, I think during the Civil War, officers were pretty much free to design and wear items that they preferred. (However, they did have to follow most of the army's regulations) (The Custer Medal, the scarlet scarf that Custer wore and I think that is when Libbie designed and made the 7 Th's flag) Also the flag that was carried by Sheridan during the Civil War, showing the sabers inverted, would not have had anything to do with death, would it?
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Post by Tricia on Apr 15, 2006 7:00:40 GMT -6
Actually, I think during the Civil War, officers were pretty much free to design and wear items that they preferred. (However, they did have to follow most of the army's regulations) (The Custer Medal, the scarlet scarf that Custer wore and I think that is when Libbie designed and made the 7 Th's flag) Also the flag that was carried by Sheridan during the Civil War, showing the sabers inverted, would not have had anything to do with death, would it? Indeed, GAC's personal standard was designed during the ACW. But there's still a problem. Try as we would like to believe otherwise, the sabre tips remain pointed up--and if GAC showed such attention to detail in almost every aspect of his military career, I still doubt heavily that he would carry something into battle that didn't meet with his iconographical approval. Regards, Leyton McLean
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Gary
Junior Member
Posts: 81
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Post by Gary on Apr 15, 2006 7:53:09 GMT -6
On another avenue of the mysterious watch, Cecil Denny (A Canadian Mountie during the time just after the battle) wrote in his first edition of the book "The Law Marches West" that he collected the watch from Sitting Bull and sent it to Libbie. Does anyone have more that they can add to this?
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Post by rch on Apr 15, 2006 12:32:37 GMT -6
The 1906 date probablty comes from Boots and Saddles At the Little Bighorn by James S. Hutchins. His footnote on the watch from the Foote collection, p. 73-74, states that it was bought from a Sioux in 1906, was lost in a dice game, exhibited in a travelling show, disappeared for a while and finally turned up in California perhaps in the 30's. The man who sold it to Foote bought it in the 40' s.
Because it looked identical to the watch in "They Died With Their Boots On," I never believed it was authentic. I never read anywhere that the Michigan Brigade presented Custer with a watch. Custer led the charge at Gettysburg with the words, "Come on, you wolverines" not 'ride." When I read it turned up in California, I assumed it was a fugitive from the Warner Brothers property department. I'm sure if the people in Hollywood had a real watch of even something they copied from the genuine article, there would have been some publicity about it.
rch
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