Treasure Hunting

If you’ve never heard of the American Civil War “Battlefield Ring,” don’t feel bad. Neither had we. But now that we have we are completely obsessed.

According to the Winchester Star, metal detectorist Tony Lockley of Frederick County found a ring, referred to by some as “the find of the century,” and as a “national treasure” by others.

The story goes like this:

21 years ago, Tony and his friend John Tracy Campbell were metal detecting on private property when John got a strong signal. He handed his metal detector to his wife to pinpoint the signal and start digging. When they finally got to what was giving the sound, a large, gold-plated ring, size 11, popped out of the soil.

That’s an average enough find… but this ring was inscribed… with the names of 16 Civil War battles and skirmishes that starts with the engagements during the 1862 Peninsual campaign (York town and Williamsburg) and ends with the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. In between were landmark battles such as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and The Wilderness.

John and Tony were definitely hooked on metal detecting but neither of them really understood the uniqueness of the ring they found. In fact, John even gambled the ring in a weekly poker game during the mid 1980’s!

Tony, however, purchased the ring back in 1987 and displays it at Civil War relic shows and artifact exhibitions.

The Winchester Star, however, hits the nail on the head with its closing two paragraphs:

“Nonetheless, his curiosity remains at a high level of “pique” regarding the band’s origin. From where the ring was found, ’tis safe to assume it belonged to a Union soldier — most likely an officer who could afford to have the band made — in Gen. Phil Sheridan’s occupational forces that ringed Winchester after Appomattox. The names of the battles inscribed — for example, Antietam rather than Sharpsburg — clearly indicate Union ownership, while the dates of the battles suggest a post-war crafting.

The nagging question, of course, is who the ring belonged to. As there is no hint of identification, that basic fact is most likely lost to antiquity. What might be ascertained, though, is the unit to which that particular soldier belonged. The clue critical to solving this mystery may lie in the minor engagements inscribed on the ring. Two such battles are Williamsburg and Hanover Court House, fought in May 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign. Presumably, if one can pinpoint the Union units engaged in those two clashes and then determine if any were involved in the other 14, the search can be narrowed. Sounds like a job for PBS’s “History Detectives.”

And as for Tony,… he keeps a metal detector in the back of his pick-up, just in case…

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