RELICS OF THE WAR
By Dr. S. O. Young
Houston, Texas 1913
Walking down Main St. the other day I saw in one of the show windows an assortment of shot and shell which, according to an attached card, were taken out of the bayou near the Milam Street bridge. These had all been nicely cleaned and painted black, so that they looked as good as new, in spite of the fact that they had remained so many years in the mud of Buffalo Bayou.
One would naturally suppose that they had been thrown in the bayou to keep them from falling into the hands of the Federals who at that time were expected to invade Texas. Such, however, was not the case. Lee had surrendered; and the Trans-Mississippi department of the Confederate States was alone in its glory to to represent the Confederacy. However, the soldiers of the Trans-Mississippi department did not care for such an honor and those stationed in Galveston, Houston and other points on the coast, having no enemy in sight to whom to surrender, concluded to take matters into their own hands and just quit. Having quit they concluded to take everything movable that belonged to the Confederacy. Horses, wagons, guns and ammunition were seized wherever found, and of these powder and lead were more sought after than all else. At that time there was a large two-story brick house on the corner of Travis and Congress Avenue, north side of market square, owned by Jack Kennedy, the father of the late John Kennedy and father-in-law of Wm. Foley. The building extended back on Travis Street where Foley's store now is. This building was occupied by the Confederates and was used as a factory for making percussion caps and cartridges. Where Foley's store now stands was used as a warehouse and in it were stored boxes of cartridges, caissons filled with ammunition for field guns, rifles and any kind of ammunition except that for heavy guns. There was a large quantity of cannon powder, hand grenades and large bombs stored over in the old powder house near the city cemetery, northwest of the Central Railway depot. The powder house was broken into by the soldiers and its contents, proving undesirable, were scattered over the ground or rolled down the hill into White Oak Bayou. The next move was on the Kennedy building and here they reaped a rich harvest. Boxes of cartridges were broken open and their contents appropriated. Boxes of powder were ripped open and when found to be cannon powder, they were thrown on the floor. Soon the floor was covered with powder, loose percussion caps and an indescribable assortment and litter of dangerous things. There were hundreds of rough shod men trampling and stamping over this and the wonder it is that the whole place and everybody for blocks around were not blown to pieces.
The remarkable thing is that no one seemed to realize that there was the least danger and it was a good natured, jolly crowd that went on with the work of looting. One shining example of the opposite opinion was was the owner of the building, Mr. Kennedy. He realized the danger to the fullest extent and did all in his power to check such recklessness. He begged and implored the crowd to get out and let him lock the doors and pointed out the almost certain explosion and consequent destruction if a halt were not made. All this talk fell on deaf ears and finally in desperation he took matters in his own hands. He hired a lot of men and giving them buckets full of water flooded the place. There were no hydrants or water works at that time so the water was drawn from a cistern and the buckets passed from hand to hand until the place was flooded. Late in the evening everything worth saving had been carried off by the soldiers, but the shells and hand grenades with a lot of fuses remained. These were all dangerous, of course, so Mr. Kennedy concluded to get rid of them. He hired some drays and teams, loaded the shells on them and, carting them down to the Milam Street bridge, known then as "the iron bridge", he had them cast in the bayou.
There must be hundreds of them there yet. From time to time during the prevalence of a norther the water in the bayou fails so as to reveal those which were dumped off near the banks. These were fished out and saved as relics, but no doubt hundreds others lie deeply in the mud or in such deep water they are never exposed.
In 1866 a severe norther blew the water out of the bayou, revealing a number of these shells near the bank. Two young men, who were machinists in McGowen's foundry, fished one of the shells out of the mud and placed it on the bank to dry. When dinner time came they took their hammers and tools and tried to get the fuse out of the shell. They had worked but a few moments when there was a terrible explosion and both young men were killed, being horribly mangled.
A negro living out near the Hardcastle place in the Fourth Ward got two or three of these old shells out of the bayou. He left them lying around his yard for a long time, not knowing they were dangerous. One day while cleaning up his yard he raked the trash up over one of the bombs and set fire to it. The explosion that followed alarmed the whole neighborhood, but fortunately did no damage to any one. It is safe to say that the other shells belonging to the negro's collection now rest at the bottom of the bayou which runs near his place.
(This story is from Dr. Young's very interesting and hard-to-find book 'True Stories of Old Houston and Houstonians'.
The bridge he refers to is right downtown now, in the 4th largest city in the U.S., and the shells are 'no doubt' still there.)
