interesting and educational...

... when we went on a little field trip to Athens over the weekend. I wanted to go to the University museum to see the exhibit with old firearms. I thought I was going back in January, but just could not get up the motivation to go. Knowing that the items would be removed from cases, and returned to their owners in late February, I was running out of time to visit.

So I proposed an excursion on Saturday morning. Taking along a passenger who has GPS on her phone, making her navigational skills essential to finding our way there and back again. Pretty sure she was not at all interested in going to see old guns, but she was a really good sport, agreeable to my plan.

Hard to think of antique firearms as 'art' but the workmanship truly was amazing. These weapons are close to two hundred years old, having been made entirely by hand, by skilled craftsmen back in the mid-1800's. The details on the stock of each gun was really impressive, with inlaid silver filigree, and ornately designed trigger guards. A couple of them had little bits of flint, appearing ready to be fired. They all had the little rod that is necessary to load the weapon with gunpowder and shot. Well preserved items that all came from private collections, assembled as a really interesting exhibit for public viewing.

My cousin told me about the collection, and said it would be worth seeing, as all the contributions were owned by individuals, and would likely not ever be available for public viewing again. The most surprising thing I saw was not an antique flintlock, but a painting of my great-great-great granddad. The painting has been in the family for years, but somehow that fact had never been impressed on my mind before. Mr. Murden was a gunsmith, living in east Georgia. The portrait was in my grandmother's house for many years when I was small, and now belongs to a family member who lives in Atlanta. I knew who he was, had heard his name all my life, but never that he was the father of the wife of WT, who went to war as a 15 year old sharpshooter. Wow.