The Civil War cannon in the Courthouse lawn

Fresh Civil War recruits once camped in the lawn of the old Warren County Courthouse.

Now, a vestige of that bloody strife – a Civil War cannon – has rested in front of the courthouse for roughly 30 years.

But the cannon hasn’t always been what it is now.

A 1976 Warren Times Observer photo shows a refurbished World War I cannon on the courthouse lawn.

It was the intent of the commissioners at the time that the piece become a permanent fixture on the courthouse lawn.

The current cannon – dating to the American Civil War – was originally located in the “Pioneer Circle” at Crescent Park, and would offer a celebratory shot each Fourth of July.

A 1988 Times Observer article said the tradition ran back at least 60 years.

It was originally placed at Crescent Park in 1921 and remained there until 1955 when it was moved to the Civil War monument in what is now known as Soldiers & Sailors Park at the foot of the Hickory Street Bridge.

It stayed there for an additional 12 years, until 1967, until it was removed due to the “deteriorated state” of the carriage – the wooden underbody that supports the barrel.

A local historian, Ernest C. Miller, took the initiative to remove the old World War I cannon, also called a Japanese Mountain cannon, from the lawn of the courthouse and replace it with the Civil War cannon.

The Civil War cannon, according to the 1988 article, sat in the City of Warren’s Department of Public Works Gasrage between when it was taken down in 1967 and restored in 1988.

The Civil War cannon – which is the same one that sits on the lawn today – was “‘identified as one of the nine Blakely-patented cannons known to exist in the United States,’ according to Warren Ripley, author of ‘Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War.’ The cannon, identified as a Blakely Type-2 by Ripley, is one of only two known to be in existence in the United States; the other is located in Greenwood, Miss., according to Ripley.”

British army officer Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely was the founder of the company, who primarily – in an ironic twist – best known for their use by the Confederates during the Civil War. Unable to sell his designs to the British military, Blakely started selling cannons to the CSA, with a total of 400 guns of his design being produced, with some sold to Russia and others to the state of Massachusetts.

The current Warren County Commissioners came into office knowing that the cannon would need to be refurbished during their first years in office as it hadn’t been worked in since 1988.

Step in Eagle Scout candidate Jacob Fankhouser.

Even though he was pressed for time, he wasn’t look at the project as a quick fix. “Jacob wanted to be sure this wasn’t going to be a temporary restoration,” Craig Fankhouser said. “We took extra measures making it as permanent as we could.”

“I’m happy with the way it turned out,” he said. “This has proven to be one of the coolest Eagle projects that I could have had the opportunity to do.”