8-inch Rodman in Newton, NC
8-inch Rodman in Newton, North Carolina
Sitting peacefully outside the old County Courthouse (and present history museum) in Newton, North Carolina is an 8-inch Rodman (Model 1861 Columbiad) cast in 1865 by Seyfert, McManus, and Co. in Reading, Pennsylvania for the United States Army. The cannon is a beautifully preserved example of this type.
The piece is marked on the muzzle as weighing 8,452 pounds and having been inspected by “SCL” -Stephen Carr Lyford .
The location of this cannon is a bit curious. It is a gun cast for the United States Army sitting next to a monument for Confederate soldiers. Typically, those who erected such monuments tried to procure cannon which served or could have served with the South. It is also a seacost gun more than 200 miles from the sea. I wonder what brought this cannon to a small town in the middle of North Carolina?
The answer to that question was provided by a member of the “Civil War Artillery” group on Facebook. According to a 1962 article posted on the website of the NCGenWeb Project, the “Catawba Cannon” was placed in Newton by the U.D.C. around 1900. According to the article, the gun was a replacement for a field piece that ended up being placed in Hickory instead. From 1900 to the 1960s, the cannon was widely assumed to have been a Confederate Columbiad. In 1962, a group working to restore Fort Fisher requested that the cannon be moved to the fort near Wilmington to represent the war time armament of the fort. The citizens of Newton resolved to keep their cannon, and so it remains to this day. The attention drawn by the request spurred a local historian to examine the gun and discover its Pennsylvania origin. “Catawba Cannon” on the NCGenWeb site.
While I stopped to photograph it, a local gentleman came over to tell me that teenagers of generations past had loaded it with powder and fired it. I can’t imagine - even with a blank charge - that the proprietors of the stores with large glass window fronts right across the street would have been too amused! It sure does sound fun, though!
