Cannonball Found in Downtown

June 18, 2021 - KHOU Melissa Correa interviewed Dr. Gene Preuss of UH Downtown at The Heritage Society about the cannonball and its possible desertion during the Civil War.

June 18, 2021 - ABC 13 Miya Shay interviews Dr. Gene Preuss of UH Downtown at The Heritage Society, as a follow up to their cannonball story.

PRESS AND MEDIA

On Thursday, June 17, 2021, construction workers in downtown Houston accidentally hit what was identified as an 80-pound cannonball that was 18 feet below ground on Caroline Street. For safety reasons, the media was not allowed to see or be near the cannonball. Reporters researched that The Heritage Society also had cannonballs from our 2018 exhibit “Dumped and Forgotten Below the Milam Street Bridge”. We quickly set out our collection so reporters could compare cannonball sizes, and we immediately called Texas historian Dr. Gene Preuss from University of Houston Downtown. See his interviews above and learn about what life was like for Houstonians at the end of the Civil War.

More about our collection:

After the war ended in 1865, munitions, once housed at the Kennedy building located at Travis and Congress, were dumped into the bayou. The disposal of the weaponry was part of a broader effort to deprive the approaching Union forces of the equipment and supplies of the Confederacy.  Barges loaded with rifles and cannon balls were driven up stream to the low water bridge at Milam Street and sunk. In the summer of 1968, a local archeologist organized an excavation of Buffalo Bayou near the Milam Street Bridge in the hopes of recovering long forgotten Civil War artifacts.

Our never-before exhibited archeology collection received new life with modern conservation treatments and was researched by experts in munitions. The result of the year-long project was to educate visitors about Houston’s role as a port city in the Civil War, to discover what happened to these artifacts once abandoned in the bayou, and to learn about the techniques used to conserve artifacts left underwater for decades. The exhibit ran from May 16 to August 18, 2018.

Related articles: CultureMap Houston Chronicle Houston Press

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