Your opportunity to participate in the Ruger Camp #1 Website.
Submitted by: Brother
Dennis St. Andrew, PDC
Major
General Thomas H. Ruger Camp #1
Department
of North Carolina
I recently
acquired a small collection of relic crystal & china that once belonged to
Union Major General Judson Kilpatrick and his second wife Luisa Valdevieso.
General Kilpatrick was Sherman’s Cavalry Commander during the March to the Sea
and the Carolinas Campaign, and he was the first Union officer wounded in the
Civil War. He married Luisa Valdevieso
in Chile in 1866.
I say
"relic" since the collection was discovered in the early 1940's
beneath the basement dirt floor, housed within wooden barrels, in the ruins of
the Kilpatrick mansion on the family farm in New Jersey. The Kilpatrick mansion had been destroyed by
fire in 1921. General Kilpatrick died in
Chile in 1881.
The china in
the group includes an armorial plate, teacup & saucer, after-dinner cup
& saucer, and a scallop-rimmed vessel with “Imperial Crown China”
backmark. The armorial pieces feature a
central eagle in fighting position shown with United States flag and motto
"Tuebor" above, with stylized "LVK" monogram below. “Tuebor” was General Kilpatrick’s Latin motto
meaning “I will defend”. The crystal
stemware pieces each have two opposite shields, one bearing Kilpatrick's crest,
the other the "LVK" monogram, and they are both distorted from the
fire. A veteran’s association in
Connecticut presented the Kilpatricks with a set of presentation silver
featuring the same eagle crest and monogram as these items as a wedding gift.
A vocational
agricultural student discovered the objects in the early 1940s while serving as
an intern at the former Kilpatrick family farm, now a dairy farm in Wantage,
NJ. Not knowing the farm’s history, he
discovered the remains of the house's foundation, as well as several domestic
objects, including the crystal & china while hoeing the potato patch. The crystal & china were found in the
burned remains of five wooden barrels, burned to within six inches of the
bottom. The current property owner let
the young man keep the pieces in this collection.
On this same
farm, for five days in 1878 General Kilpatrick staged the first re-enactment of
a Civil War battle. The encampment for
Grand Army Union veterans drew 40,000, including 4,000 veterans, and it
featured military parades, speeches by politicians and famous generals, a play
authored by Kilpatrick, and a “mock/sham” battle between the veterans and
members of the New Jersey National Guard.
The
Kilpatrick mansion was built in 1863.
When the mansion burned in 1921, it was occupied by Miss Julia
Kilpatrick (General Kilpatrick’s oldest daughter), her husband General William
Rafferty, and their daughter Mercedes.
All of the mansion’s contents were destroyed in the fire, including a
room that was used for storage for Kilpatrick Family effects and the home was
never rebuilt. Mrs. Luisa Valdevieso
Kilpatrick died in Santiago, Chile in 1926.
Modern day descendants of General Judson Kilpatrick include Gloria
Vanderbilt and her son Anderson Cooper.
For more
information: https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/hugh-judson-kilpatrick
Please submit items to the Camp Signal Officer, Brother Jim Johnson for future postings.
