This foot or staff officer’s sword by Wilson uses the same hilt he used for a C.S. Navy or Marine officer’s sword pictured by Hoffman in Swords of Honor and Regulation. The overall look is similar to a College Hill Arsenal product with low-dome, broad-brim, “high hat” pommel where the knucklebow joins at its lowest edge on the underside, and a blade using an unstopped fuller and false ricasso, or rounded lower edge for an inch or so from the guard. The extra branches in the complex guard, however, and their pattern, is typically Wilson.

The knucklebow is solid, with no provision for a sword knot. Two side branches come split off from it to rejoin at the very top of the asymmetrical oval counterguard just at the neck of the quillon. The center branch, however, has forked about half-way up, with one curving extension striking the outer branch and another striking the counter guard, in both cases midway up, effectively splitting the space into four curving, leaf-shaped openings with pointed ends. (We also offer another Wilson sword of similar design that adds yet another branch in the guard.)  The branches and quillon are substantial, but the counterguard is flat in contour, though with a slight downturn on the reverse.

The grip has a slight center swell and brown leather wrap showing some minor wear, but generally in very good condition with good color and finish. The wire binding consists of two strands of two twisted brass wires.

There is no pad remaining on the underside of the guard. The blade follows the general lines of an 1850 foot officer blade, though fairly straight, with single broad unstopped fuller and a false ricasso showing some crude forging at the beginning of the edge. The blade is unetched, in the bright, with smooth metal showing just a few thin gray spots, mostly toward the tip. We see one very small nick and the tip is lacking perhaps ¼ inch.

J.C. Wilson seems to have run the only private sword making business in Texas during the war, but wanted to get out of sword making in Fall 1862 in favor of another business. That other business may have been his arsenal (or armory) producing percussion caps, and perhaps other munitions, on the Buffalo Bayou in Houston. That facility that gave the name “Arsenal Bend” to the location, which is said to have been near the intersection of Milam and Franklin Streets. This may place it at or near his sword factory on Main Street (parallel to Milam and separated only by one street.) In any case, Wilson advertised the sword operation for sale in a Houston paper Sept. 3, 1862: “Sword factory for sale. The subscriber having engaged in other business offers for sale his Sword Manufactory, together with a good stock of material and work (finished and unfinished.) The Blacksmith and Finish shops are well stocked with tools, patterns, &c and the whole business is in successful operation. J.C. Wilson Main Street.”

Wilson does not seem to have found a buyer. In November 1863 he was still at the “Sword Factory,” and may have been making swords, but was advertising for sale needles for different types of sewing machines. He may have wanted to get out of the sword business in 1862 because of a downturn in business with the fall of New Orleans in 1862 and a tightening Federal blockade that restricted trade. A Wilson sword etched by Bissonnet of Mobile may indicate Wilson had had a big market in mind. (Bissonnet himself had lived in Texas before the war. We find him in Hardin, about 50 miles from Houston, working as a jeweler in 1860 and back in Texas, working in Houston itself by 1870. So, there may have been a prewar connection.) Wilson’s postwar career is still unexamined, but we note a “J.C. Wilson & Co.” on Main Street in Houston as a carriage maker as early as 1869.

This is a very rare Confederate sword with great Texas connections worthy of a sophisticated collection.  [sr]  [ph:L]

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