Jim,
Many thanks for your informative post - your rapid accessing of a copy of Frost's
The Custer Album is impressive! What do you think of the proposition that
if Frost was correct in his reading of 'Solingen' on the blade of the captured sword, then this might still leave it a Spanish colonial blade, but which had had the 'Solingen' added to give it that added cache or kudos of a German blade? I am thinking of something along the lines of the many Scottish
claidheamh mor with inferior local blades that are nonetheless marked 'Andrea Farara'.
Another possibility occurs to me. In Connell's
Son of the Morning Star , Frost's inspection of the captured sabre is described as discovering 'close to the hilt...a few
nearly obliterated letters which he read as Solingen....' What if they are so nearly 'obliterated' that Frost simply misread them? Might they not perhaps be 'Sagaum' or 'Sagahum'? This possibility would certainly tie in with the double edged three fullered blade style.
Jeff - the hilt on the Confederate sabre as shown in the Frost book is a three bar.
On a different tack, I posted regarding Custer's Roby on the Little Bighorn Associates Forum. A response carried the intriguing story below:
QUOTE:
Your question is an interesting one. I'll add a little more mystery to Custer and his sabres. I have a copy of a newspaper in Mitchell, SD, dated December 13, 1932, and another undated, at about the same date. There was a court fight over Custer's "sword," which had been found sticking out of the ground. It had been found by a man 25 years earlier when a boy. It stayed in the family until loaned for a school play, got lost, and ended up being sold by an antique dealer, who had in the meantime verified via letter by the swordmaker company (still in business in germany), that the sabre was made in Germany for General Custer (old records verifying that). The antique dealer had the letter, but lost the court fight (the newspaper story), and the sabre was returned to the Kimball, SD resident. It is still in the possession of the family, and I have held it in my hands, and have pictures of it. It looks just like the 1860 cavalry sabre you mention, but has the name of the maker engraved as "C.A. Westmann Dresden," along with "Eisenhauer Garantir I" and "W.K & C."
If you would like, I can download a picture of the sabre and send it via email (don't see how I can do it here). my email address is
jjeffersonbroome@comcast.net.
If this really was a sabre of Custer's it would have been lost in the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, and lost on the prairie until found about 1907. The newspaper article says the person who found it (I know his name but the family requests anonymity) was riding on the prairie near Kimball when he noticed a chain protruding from the ground. Pulling it up, he found the sabre attached. Interesting mystery, eh?
UNQUOTE
Now, my feeling about this story is that there must certainly have been a sabre discovered to prompt the newspaper story. That this weapon was Custers personal weapon with a provenance to that effect from the German makers can, I think, be dismissed as hyperbole. I would suggest that the sabre in question was more likely to have been lost somewhere in SD by an Indian who had acquired it as a battle trophy. The fact that it was found driven into the ground and connected to a chain suggests that it may have ended up being used to tether an animal. As a German bladed weapon, it would most likely have been imported to the States before or during the Civil War - and certainly before the US manufactured M1872 sabres which Custer's cavalry would have carried into the region were issued. Perhaps it was taken by Indians from a fight such as the 'Fetterman massacre' in the 1860's. In any event, I'm sure you'll all agree that the story of this find is a fascinating one.
Ciao,
GAC