Gettysburg's Most STUNNING Artifact Collection (JFK, Marilyn Monroe) | History Traveler Episode 148

[Music] well whenever i started this giant gettysburg series i started having several people sending me messages telling me that i needed to stop by the gettysburg museum of history well funny story last night i was staying right here at the federal point inn and happen to run into eric dorr who runs the gettysburg museum of history he invited me to come out today and spend some time looking at all the the different artifacts that they have there at the museum i've heard tons of great things and uh yeah gonna head down to downtown gettysburg and uh see we can learn [Music] all right uh just got in here into the gettysburg museum of history and holy smokes we are going to need a few videos to get through this thing i've never seen anything like this in my life and and here is the man who is behind this amazing collection this is eric door he's going to kind of walk us through this museum and like i said this is going to take a few videos to get through all right jd i want to show you a couple of neat things in here i'm going to give you a quick walk through uh the first thing that comes to vision here is the general warren's hat this is an actual civil war general's hat and it belonged to general warren who's famous for his uh his uh activity on little round top and they have a monument to him up there and this came directly from the family back in the 1960s and also looking at this case i i love the confederate math book that has actual story problems about killing yankee soldiers oh my gosh if one confederate soldier can kill 90 yankees how many yankees can 10 confederate soldiers kill so it's a it's a really fantastic piece coming over here we have a belt buckle that was hit by a bullet now this is actually from a man named michael miller who was in company k first pennsylvania reserves they were the famous unit that fought here at gettysburg and he wrote a letter to his wife about this event it says a ball struck me on the plate on my waist belt it bruised me a good deal but i thank god it struck there for had it not hit the belt plate i would this day be in the ground for it would have gone through my bowels so this is a belt buckle that literally saved this guy's life coming over here we have a bunch of artifacts from various spots on the gettysburg battlefield um you know each plate is an area and this is reminiscent of the old museums here at gettysburg where there was lots of small private museums that would have little plates full of relics because they didn't really have good glass cases back then i guess and a lot of people who came here in the you know in the 50s and 60s will remember this kind of display and we kind of made this this collection uh like a throwback kind of situation i want to show you this picture right here this is wesley culp the famous gettysburg rebel he actually moved away from gettysburg and to down to virginia to work in the carriage industry and he joined a local militia there and when the war broke out he joined the confederate army and his brother uh william kopp was in the 87th pa so we talk about the civil war being brother against brother well this is a case where it literally was brother against brother they actually faced each other in battle so coming over here this is a real confederate frock coat one of my favorite pieces confederate uniforms are extremely rare and this is a lieutenant's coat and we have another coat here this is a lieutenant's coat from um gooner warren's brother edgar and it and a sword and a sash um coming over here we have the pepper collection um the pepper collection is what got me started in in the relic uh um collecting phase of my life and it started when i was about five years old my grandfather had all kinds of neat artifacts from the gettysburg battlefield and i would come up there to his house which is actually this house my grandfather lived in this house and i would play with these relics and i became fascinated with objects especially this pistol right here which was in his den and i used to play with it when i was a kid and just like look at it and i had i had this thought that oh my gosh a civil war soldier actually touched this object and i was fascinated you know five years old playing with a civil war pistol it was it's it's what ignited my passion but anyway this stuff all came from the pepper farm and their farm was near ziggler's grove if you're familiar with that it's like the union right flank of pickett's charge this is a very fascinating item this is a relic pyramid it was made by a guy named f hayes delaney in 1896 and he attached relics to this obelisk and labeled every one of them so this is one of my favorite pieces now coming into here we have all kinds of it kind of goes from civil war into presidential items this is uh general harding's p hardin's pistol and sword great pieces the presentation pistol still in the box fantastic over here i want to show you this is one of the last medals of honor for the civil war it was actually presented on or or the action was on april 7th 1865 and um that's on loan from his family we have a lock of george and martha washington's hair we get into some of the commanders in chief here we have uh truman's hat we have roosevelt's keys to his desk ronald reagan's briefcase a lock of abraham lincoln's hair that was taken the night or taken by the undertaker who was preparing his body it's one of the few what we call copious hair locks that are out there this is eisenhower's golf clubs now eisenhower lived in gettysburg and he played golf here and he was friends with the pro out there at the gettysburg country club and he gave these golf clubs to him so this was a set he used a few times and gave him to the golf pro so president garfield is maybe one of the lesser-known presidents but he's one of four presidents to have been assassinated he was killed by a guy by the name of charles guiteau well dad gum they have in here pieces of the rope that were that was used to hang charles guiteau coming into here we get into some of the world war one world war ii items you know gettysburg's battlefield was used as the u.s tank corps training camp in world war one they actually used our battlefield as a a training ground and it was commanded by then captain dwight d eisenhower and that's one of the reasons he decided to move back here but we have some items from camp colt here another little known fact is the gettysburg battlefield was used as a pow camp in world war ii so we had german prisoners of war on our battlefield in world war ii so we have a lot of world war ii items in here a lot of items that were captured pistols uniforms all kinds of interesting things japanese flag with blood on it famous germany awake flag and coming out here gettysburg was visited by several presidents and we have a hall of presidents here and these are all photographs of presidential visits to gettysburg and the gettysburg museum of history has one of the l or probably the largest collection of photographic images of visits to gettysburg i've been looking for them for 30 years and we have hundreds of them and so we have this whole thing of presidential visits and we have a whole bunch of president kennedy over here and then we go into this room this is what we call the jfk room and several years ago i was fortunate enough to be able to obtain the evelyn lincoln collection of john f kennedy artifacts and evelyn lincoln was his personal secretary and she befriended a man named robert l white and he was a mentor of mine growing up he was a super collector he had a huge collection of really outrageously high quality historic items including the jfk collection when he passed um i was able to buy some of those items and um we have probably one of the best kennedy personal collections around this is his suit um he wore that from 1955 to 1960. in the pocket was a note to senator then senator which he would have been vice president-elect johnson it says senator johnson wants you to call right away according to mrs lincoln so he says someone had given that message to jfk put it in his pocket and it stayed there wow and so that was found in there there's some photos of him wearing it we have a lot of stuff from the texas trip the ill-fated texas trip there's his original schedule um this is a check that was written by him on on november 14th and of course the assassination date is the 22nd and it has a dishonored check advice stapled to it and it says reason for return it says return by death kind of a morbid uh poignant peace there but one of the most poignant pieces that we have in here is we have a piece of the leather from the limousine that kennedy was killed in oh my gosh and it's a blood relic you know it has his blood on it the limousine was sent back after the assassination and here's a little known fact the the presidential limousine that kennedy was killed in was not owned by the government they didn't buy it it was actually leased from ford motor corporation so they had a white house liaison his name was vaughn ferguson and the car was sent back to ohio to clean it because you can't just make a presidential limousine out of thin air because they were somewhat armored they had big engines there were specialty things in that limousine she couldn't just like have another one roll out right away so the idea was to clean it to fix it and to have johnson use it for the funeral well that didn't happen because it was uh vaughn ferguson took it back to ohio he started scrubbing the seats to try to get this bloodstains out he couldn't do it because it was fine leather and it's so soaked through so they had to rip it out and reupholster the car and they also ended up putting more armor plate in and putting a bigger engine in so it took longer than anticipated vaughn ferguson had the foresight to keep a section of that leather and the leather now he had cut it into a few pieces and um i believe the jfk library has a piece the national archives has a piece we have a piece and there are a few pieces out there but the the lighter piece there has a little bit of staining on there it's hard to see but it's there and that is the president's blood so it's a amazing piece history gosh that is unreal and then we have some other jfk personal items his grooming kit some of his cards this is a little drawing that caroline made in the white house with crayons and it was thrown away and mrs lincoln uh saved that from the garbage can i mean she would empty the white house garbage can mrs lincoln had an office right next to the oval office there's a little office there for the secretary and things like that that got thrown away she would pull it out of the trash can so when we got the collection there was approximately ten thousand documents in the files and we still have many of those files today so there's a lot of paper items um you know jfk's checkbook you know writing instruments some notes and doodles from the cuban missile crisis a lot of neat things and we also have some really amazing items from the aftermath of the assassination and at least this stuff has to do with the dallas police department lee harvey oswald and jack ruby so we have jack ruby's suit that he wore to his trial we have um the door knob and plate from lee harvey oswald's house we have some doodles made by ruby and probably the best thing in here is uh this shell casing which came from ruby's gun and it was saved by the dallas d.a henry wade and that show was in his desk for years and years and um robert white the former owner of this collection was able to get it from him we have a letter from henry wade so that's like that's the shell casing that killed oswald wow and it's not in the national archives it's not in the dallas police archives it's here pretty wild item that is something else [Applause] [Music] okay so uh we try to keep things uh at a at a pg level uh on this channel uh there are a few items in here that get to the the pg-13 but they're so unique and fascinating it i i have to show it all right well i don't know where else you can go and see the boxer shorts of john f kennedy and uh they have a few other interesting items here including um some clothing items that belonged to marilyn monroe this this is crazy oh my gosh i just saw this too i don't know how long you would have to spend in this museum to see everything but it is unreal this is a piece of the original fence from the grassy knoll at dele plaza which of course was um kind of one of the the centerpieces uh during the jfk assassination oh and here's a piece of the lamp post where he was shot or close by there at dealey plaza this this is just absolutely unbelievable [Music] so this presidential seal is the original presidential seal that kennedy authorized to put on marine one which was the presidential executive flight department and they the the marines fluke part of it and the army part part of it now it's all the marines it's all marines so what would happen was they had several helicopters i believe they still have this protocol when they would fly out of the white house and there was a plastic sleeve basically a piece of plexiglass and the one that the president was in we get this seal and it's this it's a big piece of steel it's painted i guess it was done with a silk screen or something but you can see on that photograph there there's some of the marines there on that one it has you can see where that would go this is the original one from 1962 that um kennedy authorized to put on there before that they didn't fly with the presidential seal and it this one was used from 1962 to 1964 so it was also used through the part of the johnson administration and was given to the flight chief as a retirement gift and another uh historian obtained it from him and then we got it from them so that i just love that you know it's one of those great things it's like uh you know kind of a random little thing and you know back in those days things got out you know today all presidential items ends up in the in their presidential library but in the jfk era even into the johnson era things would be given away you know johnson gave chairs away i mean johnson gave this chair right here to a white house photographer can you imagine walking out of the white house holding you know but this was also used during the kennedy administration and jackie had bought that chair in 1962 and it was in the lincoln bedroom and the oval office for a while oh my gosh so moving over here this is we we usually call this the d-day room but this is also where the major dick winners collection is we'll talk about that a little later but i'm going to highlight a couple of other items in here that are pretty fantastic we have a bunch of killed in action helmets here some purple hearts this is most of the stuff is killed in action but this is something that's always fascinating to people this is a helmet that was recovered at omaha beach an american m1 helmet and it's got the liner in there too but it was under water for quite a while and it developed sea life on it and you sometimes find artifacts from normandy like that a historian i know and normandy got that for us and here's a british rifle that was also found in uh in normandy and it's got the same thing going on with the with the sea life on it and there's a mortar shell that was from utah beach same same situation another neat thing in here that i i like to talk about are these these are trophy helmets and um american soldiers would get german helmets and they would paint where they've been sometimes it's in this case it's a memorial for fallen other fallen soldiers all three of these are from the 29th division that was a unit that was uh landed on omaha beach on june 6 and uh i i just really like them because each one's different it's artwork it's soldiers expressing themselves and i really i look for those whenever i can find them moving around this is the dick winners collection we'll talk about that a little bit later but we have some eisenhower items here we have some stuff from general ridgeway we have bradley's hat um we have an airborne signal cricket the famous crickets that they used on d-day general patton's razor oh my gosh yeah in one of his books and um over here here's another rifle this is a m1 garand i mean an m1 carbine i believe we don't really know because we can't see it but that's about the size with the sea life on and i think because the ammunition in the in the magazine it kind of blew up like that it's like it like corroded so much um so going over here this is a d-day uniform that was actually this is a paratrooper uniform it's the m-42 jump jacket and pants and it was reinforced for d-day they would actually reinforce the pockets and and the knees because they learn from the italy jump that these uniforms would tear very easily because paratroopers carry a lot of extra equipment extra ammo extra food extra grenades and they put them in those pockets and they tear so they they got this idea to reinforce it with actually it was tent material so this is one that was actually used on d-day and we know that because it has the guy's name in it and it has his blood in it and we've we've been in contact with the family this actually surfaced about 30 years ago at an estate sale in chicago oh my gosh i bought it from a very famous author and historian and it has his name it has his name st stenciled in the back but it has blood all over it mostly in the back and when we found his family they gave us some photos his name is stanley medei and he was in the 502 paratrooper or parachute infantry regiment 101st airborne and they told me and we also pulled his files and stuff and found out some information but he was wounded on d-day broke his foot because they he jumped too low like a lot of those guys broke his foot and then he also got wounded by shrapnel in the face by a grenade or a mortar and uh there's blood on some of the pockets and going down the back so he was evacuated out and however the uniform got out i'm not sure probably mailed home but that's a true d-day worn m-42 set which is extremely rare because they they stopped using these after d-day they went to another model uniform this is a german uniform that was found in a bunker in normandy so i know a historian over there who excavated the crisp battery which is behind utah beach and uh when they did uh you know there was all kinds of trash in there the french used it as a dump basically after the war and they there's all kinds of things in there this was found in the stove pipe oh my god so um i saw that about 10 or more years ago at another historian's house and i i was so intrigued by that i mean to me that's like you know being a gettysburg guy i said i i was like that that would be like pulling a confederate uniform out of the kaduri house or something i was so into this and a couple years later he came to visit me and he gave it to me for the museum so i was i was over the mother and it's it's published in a book about chris beck battery too so it's a published item jack agnew's uniform that he wore as a veteran that was that's on loan from the family jack agnew was one of the famous filthy 13 and those are the guys that jumped on d-day with the mohawk haircuts so that's a uniform he wore as a veteran this is lee foxx's uniform now leigh foxx was a navy aviator and he is considered the first officer killed at pearl harbor so before they hit battleship bro um they they hit the air base before that and a bunch of guys were killed there and he was the first officer and they actually named a destroyer after him and he was from new cumberland pennsylvania pretty nearby here and that's his uniform that's the telegram that his family got um and uh saying he was missing and eventually killed now here's the real fantastic item i think in here this is audi murphy's uniform and there's a picture of him wearing it there on that famous life magazine and uh that came from the family his first wife wanda hendrix had it along with a bunch of other stuff that we have and um we had to restore that uniform it was actually placed in a shadow box and sewn in there so we had some we had some work to do on that one but we got it looking pretty good you know and and uh the ribbons are all his the cib you know that the patch you know but it was uh it was quite a project but we got it we got it looking good but i mean it's audi murphy's uniform and what a fantastic piece you know and um i i just love it and there's some helmets here from d-day paratrooper helmets this is a this is a parachute it's a reserved parachute this is the back of it and that is one that was found in normandy in a barn oh my gosh i was there about 10 years ago and uh i found out about this they found a couple of these things and it was in a house near saint-germain yeah saint-germain de veraville and there was a complete t5 and there's a couple of these reserves and if you look at it it says rs it's stamped so all the airborne equipment on d-day was stamped with our commander's initials so all the parachutes and uh and drop containers that were for the 506 parachute infantry regiment would have rs and that stands for robert sink their commanding officer so there is a reserve chute it wasn't pulled because obviously his t5 worked they would wear one on their back the main chute and then they'd have a reserve in the front and so that's still packed from d-day and i couldn't believe it when i saw that it was like such a neat piece and there's a 506 helmet liner there and some really cool knives and we have some stuff i mean we have stuff everywhere you know on the ceiling here's some really great german uniforms they're up there looking very sinister up there you know we got some ss uniforms and the famous black algae in ss uniform but on the ceiling we have some flags and we have a piece of a c47 from normandy that was actually used as uh roofing material in normandy and one of my pictures kidding me yeah they were cleaning out a barn and they noticed this stuff and there was several pieces of it and i was able to get one of them so that's wow that's a great piece so jd as you can see we're out of room and we're uh we have stuff everywhere so what we really need to do is expand here and that's what we're planning on doing we're in the works right now doing a massive expansion we're going to have three times the space and we're going to interpret these items a lot better one of the plans is to build an annex and do a 10 vignette exhibit on easy company 506 because we have so much material from them and um you know the way the museum really started was of course with my family's collection but also when i was a kid i was fascinated by world war one in world war ii and i befriended a lot of veterans and they would give me items and they would give me patches and small items like that and i you know literally at six years old i was collecting this stuff when i was in fourth grade my janitor at my elementary school was a world war ii vet and i bought his collection and he had patches and all kinds of stuff and most a lot of it was german items and um you know and that was the first time i had a big box of german stuff so i paid him fifty dollars his name was mr trone um anybody who sees this who went to elementary school with me well we're not remember mr trone he was the custodian there and i paid him a little bit of money each week like a dollar here 50 cents here i would move on or do chores or whatever so i bought this big collection for 50 bucks and you know back then that was a lot of money especially when you're in fourth grade you know so um that was my first big world war two collection and i brought it home and my dad said i don't want nazi stuff in my house and i was like oh my god what am i gonna do so uh i with a little bit of convincing of the reason i had this stuff was the right reason and not the wrong reason uh he allowed me to keep it and that that got me going i mean i was i would go to auctions you know yard sales wherever i could go and i met some other dealers and so over the years i just bought and sold military items presidential items whatever and i built the collection that way and we still build the collection that way you know we have a website gettysburgmuseumofhistory.com we buy and sell artifacts we keep the items in the museum but we sell other items like if we get a big collection we get what we want for the museum and then we sell the other items so if you're interested in this material go to the website and check it out and hopefully this expansion project will take we'll get going here soon and we'll be able to uh have a much bigger museum all right well uh that was a walk through that just shows a small fraction of what is here in the gettysburg museum of history and what's cool is that um eric makes this available for everyone to see at no charge this is this is a free museum uh so anyway we're gonna take a few more episodes go into a little bit more depth into some of these rooms because it's just something that that everyone needs to see but anyway that'll be in the next few episodes [Music] oh [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 204,147

Rating: 4.9374008 out of 5

Keywords: gettysburg, history, gettyburg museum, wwii, world war 2, world war II, wwii explained, travel, history traveler, history underground, military collection, gettysburg museum, gettysburg museum of history, historic artifacts, wwi, civil war, jfk, marilyn monroe, easy company, band of brothers, german wwii, pawn stars, american pickers

Id: BPV1BRYRa3s

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021