STASH OF
CONFEDERATE SHOES
FOUND IN MONROE,
UNION COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
IN 1882
June 9, 1882, THE LANDMARK (Statesville, Iredell County, North Carolina)
-Monroe Express, 2d. On Monday evening, as Bob CRAWFORD, the barber, was chasing some rats in one of the offices on the row adjoining the old hotel, he observed something peculiar between the ceiling and weather boarding, and ripping off a piece of the plank he discovered a large lot of Confederate shoes, about fifty pair, snugly ensconced between the ceiling and weather boarding, where they had doubtless been for 16 or 18 years. During the war the upper story of the building was used as a government shoe shop, and it is probable that the shoes were dropped into their hiding place by some person employed in the shop, whose intention must have been to remove and sell them. This is the only explanation of the matter that we can find. After the shoes were brought out of their hiding place a large number of them were carried off by different persons as curiosities, and next morning after the find was generally known they were retailing readily for 25 cents per pair. We hardly know how to describe the shoes. They were of the very roughest possible construction. The bottoms are of tolerably good leather; about half of the uppers are of a strong, white cloth, stitched around with common wax thread, the leather part of the uppers being sheep and hog skin. They were all low quartered and must have been intended for summer wear, for we can’t see how even a Confederate soldier could have made out with such things during the cold of winter. If the man who made them received anything at all from the government for them, he was certainly well paid, for they could not have been worth much.
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This page originally created May 26, 2003
By Julie Hampton Ganis