Cannonballs returned to Warren armory

Posted 9/24/15

Two military relics from the Jefferson Street Armory’s distant past have come back to the building, courtesy of the Internet.

A few weeks ago, Historic Warren Armory’s Ed Theberge got a Facebook message from a Warren woman who said she’d …

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Cannonballs returned to Warren armory

Posted

Two military relics from the Jefferson Street Armory’s distant past have come back to the building, courtesy of the Internet.

A few weeks ago, Historic Warren Armory’s Ed Theberge got a Facebook message from a Warren woman who said she’d been holding onto a six-pound iron cannonball taken from the armory in 1967. Did he want it back? She asked.

“I said, ‘Absolutely,’” Mr. Theberge said Thursday.

The woman and her sister had each taken a cannonball from the building’s turret 48 years ago; they had been there many times over the years for family weddings and other functions, and were also affiliated with the American Legion, which used the old armory as its home for many years.

“Back then, there was no historic preservation,” Mr. Theberge said. “People didn’t think about it; they just took stuff.”

Mr. Theberge met with the woman at the armory one morning a few weeks ago, and while she was there her sister’s husband brought in the other. The two black, patinated balls weigh six pounds and would have been fired out of the armory’s guns, which fired six-pound shot.

“Who knows who many there were?” Mr. Theberge asked. “And what about everything else? The uniforms, artifacts … What happened to it? It’s all out there somewhere.”

Mr. Theberge said the old iron shot will be put on display along with other artifacts discovered during the old armory’s renovation.

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