In 1895, the aging former commander of the Confederate Fayetteville Arsenal, Lt. Col. Frederick L. Childs, passed
away and was buried in the quiet cemetery of the Church of the Holy Cross in Stateburg, South Carolina.[1]  The old Confederate veteran went to his grave without ever recovering a treasured piece of his father’s military past that had been passed down to him.  Childs’s gunner’s quadrant and other personal belongings fell victim to Sherman’s engineers when they razed the Fayetteville Arsenal. Amazingly, almost a century later, the quadrant was returned to the Childs family under the most curious of circumstances.

     Frederick L. Childs was the only son of an American military hero, Bvt. Brig. Gen. Thomas Childs.  Thomas Childs
entered the United States Army in 1814 at the tender age of 16, while the country was at war with England.  While a cadet at West Point, Thomas accepted an early commission from the Army to help meet the needs of the service.  The
teenager led his detachment against British forces at the 1814 Battle of Fort Erie. The young lieutenant distinguished himself during the battle by capturing British Artillery Battery No. 3.  After killing or capturing the British soldiers manning the battery, Childs and his men spiked the guns and destroyed the powder magazine.  The valuable ordnance materiel seized by young lieutenant’s detachment was then turned over to the War Department.

     Congress commended the bravery of Lieutenant Childs during the battle by having one of the captured brass
gunner’s quadrants engraved and presented to the young officer.  The inscription read as follows: "Captured
from the British at the Sortie from Fort Erie on he 17th of September, 1814, by Lieutenant Thomas Childs, who commanded the detachment that spiked the guns and blew up the magazine of Battery No. 3, at the age of 16."

     Childs served in the Army for another 39 years, rising to the rank of brevet brigadier general.  He died in 1853 while serving in Tampa,  Florida.  Following his death, his only son, Frederick L. Childs, became the steward for the treasured quadrant.  Unlike his father, Frederick graduated from West Point before joining the ranks of the United States Artillery.

    Throughout his service in the United States Army and the Confederate Army, Frederick Childs carried the quadrant
with him.  As Sherman approached Fayetteville in March 1865, Childs accompanied the materiel and equipment evacuated from the Arsenal, leaving the quadrant in the care of his mother and sister at their residence on the Arsenal
grounds.  Following Sherman’s arrival at the Arsenal, Mrs. Childs approached the general, seeking protection for the family’s property.  She hoped Sherman would show leniency to her based on the Union commander’s relationship with her late husband years earlier.  Rebuffed by Sherman for her son’s traitorous acts, Mrs. Childs was left to the mercy of Sherman’s men, who showed little sympathy for the aging widow.  Their quarters and all of their personal belongings were either destroyed by fire or dumped into the Cape  Fear River along with other items from the Arsenal.

     From 1865 on, only the story of the quadrant was passed down through the Childs family. But this story had a happy
ending.  In 1932 a night watchman at the Norfolk Naval  Hospital named Paul Watson learned that a patient, Marine Corps Lt. W. W. Childs, had been in a traffic accident and had been admitted for treatment.  The curious Watson gained
permission to visit Childs from the hospital staff. 

     Watson introduced himself to the lieutenant and informed him that his father, a salvage diver, had dived the
Cape Fear River in the early 1900s in an effort to recover scrap metal from the Arsenal dumped there by Sherman’s
men. His father discovered an engraved brass gunner’s quadrant inscribed to a Lt. Thomas Childs.  The elder Watson decided to hold onto it in the hope of one day identifying its rightful owner.  The years passed, and the quadrant was
handed down to another generation.

     After hearing Watson’s story, Lieutenant Childs informed him that Lt. Thomas Childs was his great-grandfather. Coincidentally, Childs happened to have the military commissions of his great grandfather and grandfather in the car with him on the day of the accident.  He showed the two commissions to Watson, who did the noble thing and returned the quadrant to its rightful owners, his family’s mission finally completed.  One can only imagine the delight felt by Lieutenant Childs to have so treasured and storied a military item back in the family’s possession after so many years.[2]

 

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[1] “Historic Old Southern Home,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 37, April 1919, p. 130.