Eh, thought it was cool (Really old sword story)

Alrighty a bit of backstory: So i work in the city museum (got a stroke of luck job @ 16, now i'm 17 and still loving it!). Now, this city is a small one of 10,000, known only for the dam named after it and for being near the completion of the CPR. Nothing really big was going down in the early 1900's, aside from the CPR, but that would not attract the sort of thing i found.

So, i'm rooting around in the artifact databse for neat things, and find a reference to a japanese katana that is "not found in collection", so i do a database search and come up with something better!so i trek down to the basement (where we store our artifacts) and check it out. it is another sword, a military sabre to be exact! I think to myself "well, thats pretty sweet" and take it down to have a look-see at it. Turns out it was a masonic lodge sword that we got in the 80's.

Now, something was wrong with this identification to me, so i spent a week researching it, and came to the revelation that it was, in fact, a US military academy sword circa 1870-1890, manufactured byt the Pettibone MFG. Co.

The curious thing is, a local resident found it in 1913 under an old bridge here, with its tassle still attached, just laying there. The question that haunts me, and will always haunt me, i think, is how did it end up here? Why would a US military academy graduate migrate up here, to a relatively boring CPR town, and then dispose his sword under an old bridge? I coudl buy that it fell off a train, but this was not the train bridge.

Anyways, i just thought somebody here might find this story kind of cool, in the Unsolveable mystery sort of way. And i couldn't find a place that it would belong up on ATS

BTW, here's a few pics of the sword:











[edit on 4-8-2007 by D.E.M.]

None of your links to the pictures seem to be working.

Maybe it was stolen and then ditched.