The sword shown here was manufactured by Byrd Douglas & Co. of Columbia, South Carolina. It is the firms Cavalry Officer’s Sword.

W. B. Douglas started a partnership with his brother Hugh, Andrew J. McWhirter, Samuel C. Godshall, and Jasper N. Bailey, which was announced in an ad in The Tennessean, dated January 4, 1849. The partnership was to be called H & B Douglas, doing business as "Importers and Wholesaler Dealers of foreign and Domestic Dry Goods”. Prior to the War, the partnership ended and he started again as Douglas & Co. selling "Ready Made Clothing” and assorted millinery.

With the beginning of the War, his business takes a new turn. Douglas & Co. shows up as a contractor to the Confederate Government. His first surviving invoice to the Confederate Government is dated July 26, 1861, for "two pieces heavy duck”. He then goes on to sell tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of buttons, thread, cloth by the bale, jeans, gray coating, brown jeans, drabs, Columbus and Augusta osnaburgs by the bale. He even sells them 35,554 feet of pine flooring.

On August 23, 1862 he advertises in the Charleson (SC) Daily Courier, looking for "three skilled blacksmiths, who understand sword making, None but expert hands need apply” to "B. Douglas & Co’s Sword Factory, Columbia, S.C”. We next hear of him in the Columbia, South Carolina, newspaper, The Southern Guardian, dated September 10, 1862, where he advertised "Swords, spurs, bits, etc." made at the B. Douglas Factory located at the Old Foundry on Washington Street. This makes it clear that Douglas was not only an outfitter, but a maker as well.

On August 29, 1863, an ad ran in The Free South, in Beaufort, South Carolina, advertising that Douglas & Co. "had removed to their new store on Bay Street, one door east of the post commissary building Beaufort” and that they had a large stock of "Swords, Sashes, Belts, Passants &c.&.c and a full stock of Dress and Undress Military Clothing”.

Among the receipts for bits, belts, buttons, bayonets, etc., sold to the Confederate Government, are receipts for hundreds of swords, both artillery and cavalry, without scabbards. This no doubt accounts for the Kraft, Goldschmidt, Kraft style wooden scabbards found on many of their cavalry swords.

After the War he started business again, sans swords, and seemed to have made a moderate living as a dry good’s dealer. He died December 13, 1882.

This, his Cavalry Officer’s sword is perhaps his rarest pattern, (though all are rare) and fewer still have their surviving original leather scabbard. The sword’s grip wrap has, in my opinion been restored. The hilt remains tight and the blade is in extraordinarily good condition. The name R. J. Williams, is clearly scratched into the upper scabbard mount, but I have as yet, been unable to tell which R. J. Williams carried it. It is still sheathed in its original leather scabbard. The scabbard is in excellent condition, with the exception of a burned place near the center, which shows clearly in the photographs. However, it is not weak at any point.

I never recommend buying re wrapped swords, but this sword is so rare, and the price so cheap, that it may prove worthwhile to add it to your collection.

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