Artillery Parrott/Read shell fragment, found at Culp’s Hill, ex-Jennie Wade Museum and Soldiers National Museum

Being offered from the large Gettysburg collection of dug relics I acquired a while back is the nose section of a US/CS 3-inch artillery shell. It weighs 14-ounces and measures 4” x 3 ½” and still visible are the threads where the fuse adapter screwed into the nose of the shell. This artifact was found many years ago at Culp’s Hill.

This relic was once part of the well-known Civil War artifact collection of the Soldier’s National Museum/Charlie Weaver Museum from c.1971 to 2014. Before that it resided in the Jennie Wade Museum, started in 1901 by Robert C. Miller.  The museum was a collection of Gettysburg battlefield and battle-related relics housed in the small brick house on East Cemetery Hill, where Gettysburg civilian Jennie Wade was killed on July 3, 1863.

The house came into the possession of J.A. Kitzmiller in 1866; ownership passed to his daughters, Mrs. Harold Mumper and Mrs. Robert C. Miller.  Robert C. Miller, former postmaster, newspaper printer, and state superintendent of printing and binding, conceived of the idea of creating a public museum in the Jennie Wade House, which opened in 1901 under his personal management.

Miller eventually passed active management to J.T. Mumper. By the time Miller died in May 1930, management duties had been passed to former Gettysburg Mayor William G. Weaver, who was Miller’s son-in-law. In the 1950’s the building and collection were sold by the Kitzmiller heirs to local businessman L. E. Smith who, along with Hollywood actor Cliff Arquette, ran a company called Gettysburg Tours, Inc.

Arquette, better known by his stage name of Charlie Weaver, opened a museum on the Baltimore Pike that housed his collection of war related artifacts as well as carved wood Civil War soldiers made by Arquette himself. The museum opened in March of 1959 as “CLIFF ARQUETTE’S SOLDIERS MUSEUM.” By the 1960’s Arquette changed the name of the business to “CHARLIE WEAVER’S AMERICAN MUSEUM OF THE CIVIL WAR.”

Arquette sold his museum and collection to L. E. Smith who in the 1970’s changed the name to “THE SOLDIER’S NATIONAL MUSEUM.” Smith revamped the Jennie Wade Museum and moved a majority of the artifacts in it to The Soldier’s National Museum. It was at this time that the artifact offered here began its connection with the Soldier’s National Museum where it remained until that repository’s closure in 2014.

This is one of those Gettysburg relics that has everything going for it – coming from one of the most important locations of the battlefield, and once part of two prominent Gettysburg museums. I refer to these relics in both of my books "Battle of Gettysburg - The Relics, Artifacts & Souvenirs" and "Civil War Artillery - A Pictorial Introduction". I will also include the paperwork with its signed and stamped COA from the last time this piece was sold in 2018.