For the second time in three years, state archivists have stumbled upon an “astonishingly important” missing relic of Georgia’s history.
This time, it’s a ceremonial sword from the War of 1812, awarded by the Georgia Legislature to native son Daniel Appling, a national hero of that conflict. Appling County is named after him. The sword had been missing since 1907.
Just three years ago, Georgia’s long-lost state copy of the Declaration of Independence was found by an archivist digging into old records. “Two major finds like this in such a short period is amazing,” said Georgia Archives Director David Carmicheal.
The sword was spotted by a former archivist while thumbing through Antiques magazine in a barbershop.
“He came upon a full-page, full-color advertisement offering the sword for sale,” Carmicheal said. “We know it’s the Appling sword because the ad had the inscription that matches exactly what the Legislature had etched on it.”
He contacted the owner and began negotiations, thinking the sword might legally belong to the state. But after consulting the state attorney general’s office, it was determined the owner had no obligation to return it.
The owner, who Carmicheal says can’t be named, wanted $250,000, “and in these hard times for the state we knew we couldn’t ask the Legislature for the money.”
The dealer has agreed to sell it for $100,000 and take a tax write-off for the rest, Carmicheal said.
A nonprofit group, the Friends of Georgia Archives and History, offered to help, and so far has raised more than $30,000.
Carmicheal said the friends group is asking for tax-deductible donations, which can be sent to the Georgia Archives, 5800 Jonesboro Road, Morrow, GA 30260-1101 or made online at www.fogah.org.
“Without this effort we could never return the sword to Georgia,” he said.
Today, the friends and other groups, including the United States Daughters of 1812, plan “an all-out effort, calling potential donors, to ask for help,” said friends vice chair Dianne Cannestra of Sandy Springs.
“This is an astonishingly important piece of our past,” Cannestra said. “Eighteen people on our friends committee will be making calls on the Fourth, kind of a telethon, to potential donors. We are quite confident.”
“We’re hoping to have it back to put in the Hall of Valor on the first floor of the Capitol with our collection of historic flags in time for the 1812 bicentennial” in two years, Carmicheal said.
“This is a one-of-a kind artifact that rightly belongs to the state of Georgia,” said Gordon L. Jones, senior military historian at the Atlanta History Center.
James Cobb, a history professor at the University of Georgia, said the sword “is certainly a major find by anybody’s standards.”
Born in 1787 in Columbia County near Augusta, Appling joined the army in 1808, and at the May 29, 1814, Battle of Sandy Creek in New York led a small group of riflemen that defeated a much larger British force.
Later that year, his 110 riflemen delayed 8,200 British troops at Plattsburgh, N.Y., in what Carmicheal said “is considered the most decisive battle of the War of 1812 because it ... strengthened the Americans’ hand at the bargaining table.”
Appling, a lieutenant colonel, was honored in October 1814 by the Georgia General Assembly, which voted to present him with “an elegant sword, suitable for an officer of his grade,” for “his cool and deliberate valor” in action.
But Appling died before he got the sword, which then, by act of the Legislature, became state property. It was loaned out in 1907 for inclusion in Georgia’s exhibit at the 300th anniversary celebration of the founding of Jamestown and disappeared.
“We don’t know if it was returned to Georgia, or returned and lost, or given away,” Carmicheal said.
The sword, like Georgia’s original copy of the Declaration, has “rich historical and symbolic value,” Carmicheal said.
Susan D. Lemesis of Roswell, a member of the 1812 group, said the sword campaign “has been a surprise every day. One of the coolest things to happen is receiving a call from an Appling descendant who found out about our fund-raising effort by Googling ‘Appling sword’ and is so excited he volunteered to coordinate other Appling descendants to join our campaign.”
The state’s earlier historic find — a handwritten copy of the Declaration — was penned in 1777 but was lost in mounds of archival material before being rediscovered by chance in 2007. It is kept in the archives’ climate-controlled vault and is available for viewing on Georgia Day every Feb. 12 at the Capitol. Only a few other states have original copies of the Declaration and Georgia’s is too light-sensitive to be on permanent display.
Carmicheal said it’s close to miraculous that both relics have been found.
Though the sword is priceless to historians, they agree its significance doesn’t quite match that of the Declaration.
“I’d have to give the nod to the copy of the Declaration, whose import as a foundation document for the nation is self-evident,” Cobb said. The War of 1812 “ranks well below the Revolutionary War in perceived importance. Consequently, so do its artifacts.”
Still, Cannestra said, “It’s a symbol of who we are and what we are, and it should be at the Capitol for all to see.”
Declaration copy
To see Georgia’s copy of the Declaration of Independence, go to www.georgiaarchives.org, click on virtual vault, and type “declaration” into the search window
Inscription on Appling sword
“Presented, by the State of Georgia, to her son, the brave and gallant Lieut. Colonel Daniel Appling, of the U.S. Army, for his cool and deliberate valor displayed throughout the action of 30th of May, 1814, at Sandy Creek, when he succeeded in capturing a superior British force.”
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