Va boy finds apparent Civil War sword

Seven-year-old Lucas Hall holds the sword he discovered with his metal detector. It is thought to have been used during the Civil War.
(Photo by Scott Mason/The Winchester Star)    

 

BERRYVILLE, Va. 

It's truly the gift that keeps on giving.
A week after receiving a metal detector for his seventh birthday, Lucas Hall's gift is already paying dividends for the first-grader.
While metal detecting with his father, Gary, on private property outside Berryville, Lucas had a feeling the two needed to stop and look.
His hunch paid off.
Buried six inches deep was a sword thought to have been used during the Civil War.
"We stopped on the four-wheelers and Lucas said 'right here,"' Gary recounted Monday. "So we started digging, and not a minute later, there it was."
"I was excited," Lucas said.
But the pair was still unsure of their finding until they started digging deeper.
"We originally thought it was an old fence post," Gary said. "I started pulling it out of the ground, and when I saw the handle I went 'Oh my gosh."'
Lucas's passion for metal detecting skyrocketed, his mother, Tina, said, after their neighbor gave him a few Civil War-era bullets he found while metal detecting on his property.
The family is still unsure what kind of care is needed to preserve their discovery, which has been sitting on a towel in their living room since it was found.
"That's the biggest thing right now, just touching it makes it disintegrate, and I want to preserve this for him," Gary said. "We haven't had it to an expert yet because we aren't sure who to take it to."
Gary Crawford, president of the Kernstown Battlefield Association, examined a picture of the sword Monday.
He believes it is a light cavalry sabre model 1840 or 1860, but said it's too difficult based on its condition to determine where the sabre was manufactured or which side used it.
The handle design, Crawford said, helps narrow down the time period of manufacturing.
"There is really no way of knowing [which side used it] because many of these sabres were manufactured in the North before the war and stocked in southern armories," he said. "When the war started, the South just took those weapons and passed them out to their troops."
Crawford said that about 18 inches of the blade may be missing.
"It may still be in the ground," Crawford said, "or it may have been broken and thrown away - that wouldn't have been uncommon."
Regardless of any monetary worth the sabre might possess, the family isn't interested in selling the relic, Gary said.