Museum, Land Slated For First Purchase To Expand Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield

By Kelly Garbus

May 2005

REPUBLIC, Mo. — It has been called unsurpassed, extremely rare, and one of the best privately owned Civil War artifact collections in the United States.

General Sweeny's, a Museum of Civil War History, near Springfield, Mo., has drawn accolades from former National Park Service (NPS) Chief Historian Edwin C. Bearss and Michael L. Vice, retired curator at Gettysburg National Military Park.

By summer, the museum could be in the hands of its neighbor — Wilson's Creek National Battlefield.

Sweeny's, owned by Tom and Karen Sweeney (the spelling difference is correct), is on 20 acres immediately north of the battlefield and is slated to be the first acquisition for the park service under recent legislation authorizing expansion of the Wilson's Creek park boundaries.

The museum is named after Tom Sweeney's ancestor, Gen. Thomas W. Sweeny, who lost an arm in the Mexican War and fought at Wilson's Creek, where he was wounded again.

Congress last October earmarked $4.5 million for the purchase of the museum. NPS Deputy Directory A. Duran Jones, in a report to the U.S. Senate last year, described the Sweeny collection as "the number one acquisition priority for the National Park Service's Midwest Region."

The collection includes 8,000 to 10,000 museum objects and archives related to Wilson's Creek and the Trans-Mississippi theater, according to the report. Included in the collection are uniforms, weapons, flags, accoutrements and items of the common soldier. There are also thousands of photographs.

The purchase would include the museum building, the artifacts, the acreage, and the historic, five-bedroom Victorian home where the Sweeneys live.

The collection would be a boon for Wilson's Creek, which has been called a "jewel" among Civil War battlefield parks because of its pristine condition. The park, which boasts archeological sites, historic structures and artifacts, appears much the way it did in August 1861 when more than 17,000 troops clashed over control of Missouri.

"Doctor Sweeney has spent a huge amount of time to collect key items over the years, and that is what makes it so valuable to the National Park Service," said Vice. "It makes it extremely easy for the park service to interpret Wilson's Creek and the whole Trans-Mississippi region."

Complementing the Sweeney collection would be the park's new Civil War research library focusing on the Trans-Mississippi. The 9,000-volume, 8500-square-foot library, which opened in 2003, is the park service's largest Civil War research library, said Wilson's Creek Superintendent Ted Hilmer.

The sale, however, is not a done deal. The Sweeneys said they hoped to have something firm with the park service by June.

For Tom Sweeney, General Sweeny's represents the collection of a lifetime — his. Items in the collection have been used for illustrations in several volumes of the Time-Life book series on the Civil War.

A retired radiologist, Sweeney, 70, said he became interested in collecting Civil War artifacts at the age of 12.

"That's when I got my first artifact, a Colt pocket pistol," he said. "I paid 25 cents for it."

That and conversations with Civil War veterans still living when Sweeney was a youngster helped spark a fascination.

Through the years, Sweeney traveled around the country attending collectors' shows and honing his skills in buying and selling. One purchase, John Brown's Bible, which contained the written names of the abolitionist's wives and children, was sold to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. Tom Sweeney said the sale price helped build his museum, which opened in 1993.

For the Sweeneys, the Trans-Mississippi was a story waiting to be told. Once Tom Sweeney decided he wanted to build a collection of artifacts from that theater, the phone began ringing. Calls with offers of artifacts for sale began coming in weekly at first, then almost daily, Karen Sweeney said.

"It was like this stuff just came to us," she said.

But her husband knew early on he did not want a museum with just relics. He said he wanted the artifacts to tell stories.

Tom Sweeney's attention to detail is reflected in his thorough record-keeping, cross-referencing, and documentation on the authenticity of his holdings.

It is part of what adds significance to the collection.

"He has extremely meticulous records, which are unusual in private collections, and that is what makes it extremely valuable,” Vice said.

To Vice, the collection should serve as a reminder there was a war in the West, "which is oftentimes forgotten."

Bearss, in a letter to Tom Sweeney, described the collection as extraordinary.

"The collection of objects and photographs associated with personalities, campaigns, battles, and skirmishes in this vast region where 'war was to the knife and the knife to the hilt' is unsurpassed," he wrote in 1993.

Among Sweeney's artifacts are:

• An 1864 tintype of Bloody Bill Anderson's corpse. The photo shows bullet holes in the forehead and cheek of the pro-Southern guerrilla. Faintly visible in the picture and holding the Missourian's head by the hair is a Federal cavalryman.

• The sword belt, buckle and sash Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne was wearing when he was killed at the Battle of Franklin.

• The official pass that paved the way for the retrieval of the body of Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon after he was killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

• A bone carved by Andersonville prisoner William Colvin from the rib of prison commandant Henry Wirz's dog.

• The Confederate battle flag of the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles carried by Indians under Stand Waite.

Longing for some recreation time in their retirement, the Sweeneys finally decided to sell the museum and approached the park service about acquiring it because they wanted to keep the collection together.

"It's really tough to give up the collection," said Tom Sweeney, but he added, "I'm not going to live forever ... I'd like to do some fly fishing."

There will be one item, however, that won't be part of the deal — the Colt pocket pistol.

"It's the first thing I ever got," he said. "I have some attachment to it."