GDG- Re: gun powder

[biggsk at aol.com]

Hi Margaret,

What most people still think today is that the first real entrance into the labor force was with all of the wonderful "Rosies" of World War 2 when it was actually the Civil War.

Both sides used female and child labor for making things from cartridges to flags.? I have in my files on the CS supply system accounts from QM depot commanders satting the numbers of women working there.? Richmond, by November, 1862, had over 2000 women while Atlanta a bit later, had over 3000.

The Augusta Powder Mill, which used some equipment imported from Britain by the way, was set up in a chain of buildings so that if one did blow up, it would only take out that building and not the whole factory.? Quite ingenius in terms of design.? Some of the metal crushing rollers still survive and they are in Nashville's Centennial Park today.? They were shipped up here after the war when the Augusta complex was dismantled.? They are depicted in the new book on the Augusta complex.

As Jack stated, there was some powder made in Nashville in the early war and some of the equipment from there and some other war factories (like the percussion cap machine from another complex, which made the caps used at First Manassas) were loaded up train cars and shipped to Atlanta and other environs, something the Confederates got very good at doing.? There were a couple other small powder mills also going in the South before the war but I forget offhand what towns they were in.? I will have to consult my files.

Nashville also had the TM Brannon cannon foundary some of whose guns still survive today at Shiloh and where I work at the Tennessee State Museum.? Of interest to cannon buffs on this list, we have a couple finished and mounted guns but also recently got an unfinished tube that was dug up when some construction was being done on the site of the foundary a few years ago.? I see this tube almost every day.

Greg Biggs
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