Name/Title
Musket ball, c. 1815Entry/Object ID
1981.112.1Description
Acc. No. 81.112.1 (a, b, c)
Subject Category: Weapons (musket ball)
Date or period:
Object: Musket ball; clipping
Description:
a. Lead ball is one/half inch in circumference.
b. badly discolored newspaper clipping with address label of donor at the top, and handwritten: Tree diameter, 24"
c. typed contents of paper clipping.
History of Object: News clipping, March 19, 1937: "Alamedan Finds Bullet fired in tree 122 Years Ago"... Quote follows:
Close after the turn of the 19th Century a Lead musket ball was fired into an oak tree (24 in, diam.) on a spot which is now the Versailles School ground. And the tree kept the record of that event as accurately as any historian. Frank Wallin, an Alameda school department employee, discovered the bullet while felling the oak, William G. Paden, superintendent of schools, examined the tree trunk, counted the rings and determined that the lead ball had been fired into the tree just 122 years ago. The marks were clearly decipherable, he said. The ball, of .50 caliber, probably was fired by an early Spanish settler or by a sailor of the Russian brig Rurick, which visited here on a scientific expedition in 1816, under the command of Otto von Kotzebue, Paden said. Times Star.
Acquired from: Vernor Thorp
Date: Dec. 1956
