Cadet Grey Canteen Covers?

[LioZac0261]

I'm going to replace the sky-blue cover on my 1858 smooth-side canteen (this was supposedly rare?).

I understand that the covers were usually pieces of scrap cloth. Was cadet grey wool ever known to be used? What other materials were used to cover Federal canteens?

I have an old "painted" cotton plaid shirt as well. From what I can tell, it matches period patterns consistently.

[Ross L. Lamoreaux]

This always starts a firestorm for some reason, but canteen covers were not usually scrap cloth - there was cloth purposely run for covers by most contractors. Clothing was very carefully cut with the least scrap in mind (often pieces just a few inches long and in odd shapes) so I don't really know where that myth started. As to the material, you will find original canteens in a variety of cloths, from kersey wools to rough jeans and everything in between. The light and dark blue kerseys are correct in many circumstances, depending upon the contractor or depot who produced them, some early war, and most late war. One of the reasons why so many sutlers cover their canteens in blue kersey is that the originals that they use to justify that were late-war unissued canteens that survive today. Your best bang for the buck, as it seems that many images play out, is jeancloth in shades of brown or gray. The majority of canteens throughout the war seemed to have been covered in this for several reasons, to include saving the good kersey for clothing and the much lower cost of jeancloth. If you're trying to recover an old canteen, you can go with some jean remnants or do as many soldiers did and just not recover it. There are plenty of images justifying that practice as well.

[Curt-Heinrich Schmidt]

Hallo!

The "1865 Quartermaster Manual' said canteen cover material should be "... a coarse cheap woolen, or woolen and cotton fabric." Material purchases and surviving canteens show that the majority of Federal covers was jeans.

Sometimes, especially among contractotrs, any cheap cloth that was available on the open market was used so that both contract made and government purchasing agents could meet contract delivery dates. One example is from a shortage period between the Fall of 1862 and the Summer of 1863 where Schuykill Arsenal/Depot used striped upholstery fabric.

Although not a hard-and-fast rule, as other materials and colors are known... it would appear that the "ideal" was perhaps a gray jeans cover made from cheaper logwood dyed jeans that has largely "faded" to some shade of grayish tan to tan over the 150ish years since. Followed by brown jean. Before the two Great Crashes here, there used to be an archived thread containing purchase orders for gray and brown jean. I lost my saved coopy two viruses and a hard-drive death ago.

IMHO, the "scrap" cover fabric line of thinking is a Hobbyism and the outgrowth of reenactor misunderstanding about "cheap" making the assumption that cheap meant scrap(s).

Curt

[FranklinGuardsNYSM]

New York had a lot of problems with contractors and shoddy goods at the beginning of the war which was investigated by the legislature. From this, we learn that the Baldwin & Johnson firm offered to provide canteens at .40 cents each to be covered in "army blue cloth," but the contract went to Thomas Bell whose canteens were covered in "mixed brown cloth," on paper at a lower price. However, the state ended up paying .40 cents for these, anyway. Jesse Baldwin testified "there was a great deal of difference between the covering I proposed to furnish, and that he proposed to and did supply; mine was better goods." Mr. Johnson of the firm believed that Bell substituted the other cloth because "the army cloth could not be had at the time," and said it made a difference of about .10 cents per yard, translating to "a little over one cent and a half" per canteen. He further says that they "made several bids upon canteens of three or four different grades of cloth," and that his firm had, in fact, offered a canteen that would have cost .37 cents that would have been "serviceable and as good in all respects" as Mr. Bell's .40 cent specimen.

Bell's agent, George Robins, testified that his .37 cent sample was covered in "a thin flannel," but that the price ended up higher because of the sample cloth the arsenal had and requested—the "brown mixed cloth." "They wanted to know what I would furnish them for, with a covering of that kind of cloth, and I told them 42 cents."

[Jim Mayo]

Lots of good info above. This page may help.
http://www.angelfire.com/ma4/j_mayo/uscanteen.html

[LioZac0261]

Here's the completed cover. Any thoughts, opinions, suggestions?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66396919@N02/sets/72157630260439866/

I might cross stitch "U.S." or my initials using white thread. I see a lot of customized canteens. Where haversacks ever personalized as such?

[Ross L. Lamoreaux]

Not a bad attempt at all. I will offer that most originals that I've examined were machine sewn on the underhalf interior, stretched over the top and whip stitched in very small across the top. You can get rid of some of that puckering by wetting it down and letting it shrink to the canteen, but I'm afraid with the larger exterior stitches you have, you'll have some warping. As far as customizing your canteen and haversack, don't let what you see from reenactors guide you - go with what they did by looking at period images. With canteens, few soldiers took the time to remove the cover of their canteen and decorate it - remember it was just another tool to them. Those that you see in "Echoes of Glory" and auction sites that have lots of stuff on them are in the minority, and many of them were post-war decorations and remembrances. It wouldn't hurt to have your intials or company number stitched in a small manner (for identification purposes), but I wouldn't recommend much else. As for the haversack, that was company property, and as such was forbidden to be marked up short of a company number or other unit markings.

[jademonkey]

Anonymous person with the question - one great source that is still available is Mike O'Donnell's book on US canteens it can be bought at a number of sutlers that sell reference materials and can be viewed here http://www.amazon.com/U-S-Army-Milit.../dp/0967073170 (i don't think it's been mentioned yet?)

He had an earlier one that is out of print (Civil War Canteens), but might be found in a local university or historical society library. Good luck