40. Sabre and Scabbard

This sabre and scabbard reportedly was used by Brookeville native Captain William Wilkins Davis (1842-1866) during his service in the Confederate cavalry during the Civil War. It was made by the Ames Mfg. Co. in Chicopee, Massachusetts and bears the maker’s mark and the date “1860.” Ames manufactured both service and ornamental presentations swords for the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, also casting cannon, statuary, and the bronze doors in the Senate Wing of the U.S. Capitol.

On May 17, 1954, newspaperman and Sandy Spring resident Roger Brooke Farquhar presented this sword on behalf of the donor, to the Montgomery County Historical Society at its first meeting in its new home “Glenview” in Rockville. The 1926 Glenview Mansion incorporated the 1838 Richard Johns Bowie house, and was purchased by the Society in 1952. However, it was soon sold in 1957 to City of Rockville for its current use as the civic center. Farquhar, author of Old Homes and History of Montgomery County, Maryland (1952), would serve as the editor of the Montgomery County Sentinel, 1957-1973.

William W. Davis, son of Allen Bowie Davis, who owned “Greenwood” near Brookeville, reportedly organized a small cavalry unit in 1861 and took it south to serve with the Confederate States of America. At the end of the war, he moved to Minnesota and married the daughter of Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, only eight days before his death from consumption at age 23. His body was returned for burial in Brookeville.

On May 22, 1861, Davis had written to his sister Rebecca about his strong Southern sympathies-

“I hereby announce myself . . . a straight out ‘Southern Rights’ man . . . I remained by the Union as long as I could, but when I saw it was the intention of Lincoln & his crew, to convert into a despotism, the fairest, & best government ever instituted by mortal man I can no longer support a man whose avowed intention is to subjugate the South.” Meanwhile their parents had also written to Rebecca, revealing a more realistic position for prominent landholders in eastern Montgomery County. Her father wrote - “I am glad that Maryland is still in the Union – it would be utter ruin and devastation for her to attempt to seceed [sic]. The South could not protect her and she would be prey to the northern hordes.” Her mother wrote – “we may not like the present [Lincoln] administration, nor endorse its acts, but we had better bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. Let Maryland remain neutral and she may ride out safely this awful storm.”

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