The set consists of a rectangular block of wood sawn on the battlefield and mounted with square, cut glass inkwell at center with a wood top, which is surrounded in turn by relics from the battlefield: a Union officer’s Infantry-I button, a plain brass button that could be a postwar, but would at least stand in for a Confederate button, eight Minie balls, including a two-ring Confederate type, a round musket ball, an iron canister shot, an iron shell fragment, and at center rear part of the triangular blade of a socket bayonet. The bullets are anchored by small nails or tacks.

The inkwell has break in the lower left front, though this is partially concealed by the bullet in front of it. The base shows raw wood on the bottom. The rest was stained a deep brown.  The back of the base has the small remnant of a printed paper label reading, “WOOD FROM […]” and “BAYONET F[ROM. . . .]” This certainly identified specific locations on the battlefield.

This type of Gettysburg desk set / relic display originated with Edward Woodward, a British born gunsmith living in Baltimore when the war broke out, who reportedly refused Confederate offers to supervise a gun factory in favor of aiding wounded US soldiers as a member of a Union Relief Society and later moved to Gettysburg after the battle to aid the wounded as a member of the US Christian Commission. He remained in town and is known  to have been selling similar desk sets as early as September 1866 ,and by 1870 was advertising his gunsmithing and his relic business from a shop on Carlisle Street near the train depot. His desk sets frequently included a cast eagle and engraved shell fragments, canister balls, etc. After Woodward’s death in 1894 these popular desk sets continued to be made by John Good and Joel Danner, though in simpler form than Woodward’s, which sometimes also included a molding along the wood base, or carving it to resemble a book. This one likely dates 1895-1915 and is a good example of an early battlefield souvenir that might be brought home even by a visiting veteran of the battle. See O’Donnell, Hazard and Boardman, Gettysburg Battlefield Relics and Souvenirs for the story of these and similar creations that often sought to create something combining the artistic, the historic, and the useful. [SR][ph:L]

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