Strange Stories from the Cemeteries-Amputated Limbs and Breastplates

Did you ever wonder what happened to all of the amputated limbs?  They were reinterred in national cemeteries!  This is an entry for Corinth National Cemetery.  (Click pictures to enlarge.)

 

Recently, I came across another entry for amputated limbs in Memphis National Cemetery.  I didn't save the image.  Sorry.  Speaking of Memphis, Mark and I visited the museum at Mud Island there a couple of weeks ago and came across a breastplate on display. 

Looks as if it helped the guy.  Not so with the owner of this set pictured below on display at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond.

The information card said that it was taken off the body of a dead Federal soldier who had been shot in the back while fighting in North Carolina in 1862.

There is one more set at the State Historical Museum in Des Moines, Iowa.

(All photos by Mark Hidlebuagh.)

Speaking of breastplates, I saw an entry for one buried with a soldier in the Fort Donelson-Knoxville National Cemetery.  Now, I am not sure whether this is referring to the types of breastsplates seen in the pictures above or the circular plates Federal soldiers wore on their cartridge box straps. I am leaning towards the circular plate because the former probably would have been called a "bulletproof vest" as appearing in an ad by Harper's Weekly in 1862.  (If you enlarge the picture above, you can see a reproduction of the ad.)  Still, it is hard to tell for sure what is buried with the unknown soldier.

Regardless, why would somebody bury another with a bottle of turpentine?

(Source:  U.S. Burial Registers, Military Posts, and National Cemeteries, 1862-1960)