INSCRIBED MEXICAN WAR SABER LINKING THREE MEN OF THE 2ND OHIO

Model 1840 cavalry saber. Mexican War. No visible maker. Blade approx. 36 in.; overall approx. 41 1/2 in. Blade crudely inscribed in an amateur hand: “Queen City [?] / Lt. John McDonald / Comp. A. 2nd Regt. Ohio Vol. / From H. Spangenberg to R. Garwood / Mexico.”

Provenance: Collection of Pat Booth (according to Booth’s notes, deaccessioned from a Daughters of the Confederacy post in 1999)

An intriguing and research-worthy saber whose inscription appears to preserve a personal association with Ohio volunteers that served during the Mexican War. The names and unit given point most plausibly to the second organization of the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, a regiment raised in 1847 after the return of an earlier 2nd Ohio from Mexico. Ohio’s official roster notes that this later organization was intended to be known as the Fifth Ohio, yet was entered in War Department records as the “Second 2d Ohio Volunteer Infantry.” Recruited at Cincinnati and mustered at Camp Wool, the regiment embarked for New Orleans and Vera Cruz in September 1847, marched inland with a large supply train, and thereafter saw service in the Mexican interior, with Companies A through D detailed to duty at Puebla.

The inscription aligns strikingly with surviving roster evidence. John McDonald is listed among the regiment’s second lieutenants, while Richard Garwood is independently documented as having served in Company A, Second Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, war with Mexico, and later in Company I, Sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. The inscription’s “H. Spangenberg” is very likely Henry T. Spangenberg, who appears in the Ohio Mexican War roster for the same regiment, making it plausible that the blade preserves a presentation, transfer, or comrades’ memento linking three men of the same command. If the opening words are correctly read as “Queen City,” the phrase would point naturally to Cincinnati, the regiment’s mustering place and the city long known by that sobriquet.

The saber’s presence in the collection of a southern Daughters of the Confederacy post hints at a later chain of custodianship that may have carried this Ohio volunteer relic far from its original owner.

[Mexican War, Mexican-American War, Seminole Wars, Florida Wars] [Swords, Knives, Bowie Knives, Knife, Blades]