Rare Civil War-era Cannonball on Display

The Lincoln Memorial Shrine has received a nine-pound cannonball, originating from the years 1861 to 1865, to add to its collection of Civil War era artifacts and history. While the cannonball will not be the first piece of artillery ammunition to be added to the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, the plug, size and weight of the cannonball led the staff at Lincoln Memorial Shrine to believe that it is an explosive cannonball, the first of its kind to be put on display at the shrine. The cannonball was discovered in San Joaquin Valley and its donation to the shrine was orchestrated by Doug Westfall, who has been instrumental in the collection of other artifacts for the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, including a German-American manuscript from a soldier in the Civil War. Don McQue, director of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine and the A.K. Smiley Library, will be leading research on the cannonball alongside A.K. Smiley Library Archivist Maria Castillo. McQue believes that the cannonball was “lost in transport” on the way from a Civil War fort in either San Diego or the Drum Barracks in Wilmington to a San Bernardino outpost. McQue will also be reaching out to the California State Library and the California Military Museum to help solve the mystery of the cannonball’s presence, in the hope that it could help tell the untold story of California’s involvement in the Civil War and its divided history. Part of that history, according to the American Civil War Society, was San Bernardino County’s dense population of relocated southerners who did little to hide their loyalties to the south. The presence of the southern sympathizers in California strengthened the secessionist movement as a whole. Military troops from the Drum Barracks however, had the responsibility of keeping California in the Union and protecting a large portion of the southern California population during the war, according to the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum. The cannonball will be on display alongside the shrine’s other Civil War weapons, ammo and military artifacts. For more information, please visit www.lincolnshrine.org.