The cannon at Amsterdam’s Fairview Cemetery
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 07-08-17
A large cannon that marks the veterans’ plot at Amsterdam’s Fairview Cemetery was forged during the Civil War.
City historian Robert H. von Hasseln did extensive research in federal archives and local newspapers on the history of the gun.
Von Hasseln wrote, “It was born in 1864 in the fires of the cast iron forges of Builders Foundry in Providence, Rhode Island.” It was the 183rd eleven inch Dahlgren Shell Gun manufactured for the United States Navy. These guns were named for their inventor, Rear Admiral John Dahlgren.
Shell guns were developed just before the Civil War, Von Hasseln said. They fired spherical shells filled with explosives that could tear “jagged holes” in wooden ships as well as igniting “powder, shells, combustibles, and the like.”
Gun number 183 appeared in federal records at the Mare Island Naval Yard near San Francisco in 1866, according to Von Hasseln. It is not known if the gun had been mounted on any ship prior to 1877 when number 183 was among about fifty Dahlgren guns converted into eight inch rifles.
Von Hasseln wrote, “It became clear the best way to defeat armored vessels was a pointed rifled projectile (think giant rifle bullet): spinning on its longitudinal axis like a well-thrown football.” The conversion of number 183 was probably done at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York.
Visible on the gun is this notation “P; EJH: 1877” which Von Hasseln said means the gun was proved (test fired), with initials of the federal inspector and the date. Also on the piece you can read: “8 Inch Rifle; 17,240 lbs; No. 13.” This indicates caliber and type, weight of tube alone and a new registry number.
The red cannonballs stacked next to the Fairview gun, Von Hasseln said, are eleven inch spherical shells that the piece originally fired, not the eight inch conical rifle shells it fired after conversion.
Gun 183-13 saw service around the world on the USS Monongahela, Pensacola and Essex. It was later used for training and tests, then stored at the Washington Navy Yard. Some converted eleven inch shell guns were used on ships guarding the East Coast in the Spanish American War.
Fairview Cemetery was established off Steadwell Avenue in Amsterdam’s west end in 1899. Members of the E. S. Young Post 33 of the Grand Army of the Republic, an association of Union Civil War veterans, decided to create a veterans’ plot at Fairview as they had at Green Hill Cemetery.
In early 1906, the Reverend Putnam Cady of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church on Guy Park Avenue gave a talk about his world travels to raise funds to ship and mount the gun. Other fundraisers would continue for two more years, although the cannon was delivered and installed with a flag pole in July of that year.
At the dedication, Reverend Cady said: “Mounted on the decks of men-of-war, it was ever ready to obey the gunner’s will, and with its brazen throat commands respect for the stars and stripes that floated above it. Now that its active usefulness is past what better place could it occupy than this where sleep the men who have fought and stacked their arms for the last time?”
Von Hasseln said “in one of those strange twists of history,” Reverend Cady lived in the same house in Amsterdam where Von Hasseln and his wife Maria Riccio Bryce now reside.
Von Hasseln wrote that most of the original eleven inch shell guns were scrapped, “Others became pier-side and traffic bollards, a few museum displays, and one – an everlasting memorial to Amsterdam veterans.”
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