W. F. Spurlin (Camden, Alabama jeweler)

Jeweler

By his own account, Spurlin was "conducting a jewelry store in Camden, Ala., repairing watches, jewelry, and engraving" by 1856.^[1] Trade and government journals of the 1890s and 1900s place him there. The Monthly Weather Review for September 1893 lists "W F Spurlin, Camden Ala" among the Weather Bureau's voluntary observers in Alabama.^[2] In the Chicago column of The Jewelers' Circular for 25 October 1893, W. F. Spurlin of Camden, Ala., appears among the previous week's visitors to the rooms of the Chicago Jewelers' Association.^[3] On 3 November 1904 the Manufacturers' Record reported that he wanted a hand-power cider mill and press, and the addresses of makers of carboys.^[4]

Confederate service

The National Park Service's Soldiers and Sailors index lists W. F. Spurlin as a private in Company F, 53rd Alabama Partisan Rangers.^[5] In 1913 he wrote that at the surrender he was "fifty or sixty miles east of Columbia, S. C.," with a few men of Company F, 53rd Alabama Cavalry. After hearing of Appomattox they went by way of Columbia to Augusta, Georgia, where they were paroled about 10–15 May 1865, and then rode home to Camden.^[1] The same issue of Confederate Veteran carried his notice offering a reward for his cedar canteen, carved with Masonic emblems and his name. According to the notice, it had been taken from Captain Lock of Company F by a raiding party about November 1863, on the night the Cypress Creek cotton mills near Florence, Alabama, were burned.^[1] An obituary in the same volume for William N. Stewart of Wilcox County, who served in Company F of the 53rd Alabama, called Stewart "a comrade of William F. Spurlin."^[1]

The Confederate currency story

Spurlin's article "Last Issue of Confederate Money" appeared in Confederate Veteran in December 1913 (volume 21, pages 578–579).^[1][6] He wrote that in 1856 he had taken on J. H. Crosland, then nineteen or twenty, as an assistant, and that Crosland became an expert engraver. Spurlin credited Crosland with designing and engraving the artillery-battery vignette on the Confederate $10 note of 17 February 1864, which he said was meant to show Captain Bragg's battery in Mexico.^[1]

According to the account, Crosland later worked for the Confederate engraving bureau, which moved from Richmond to Columbia, South Carolina. As Sherman's army approached Columbia, Crosland, his elder brother W. A. Crosland and a Captain Sprague loaded a wagon with unsigned notes, three lithographic stones and part of a press. They made their way to Camden, spending the unsigned money along the road.^[1] Spurlin said a quarrel over dividing the spoils ended in a fight in a vacant building next to his store, in which J. H. Crosland was shot dead.^[1] He added that the three stones were still held by the Crosland family, and that he had once had them in his possession for several months as exhibits among the Confederate relics in the Virginia building at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.^[1]

In April 1953 The Numismatist quoted the account at length in an article by L. Miles Raisig, which argued that the note's vignette showed Bragg's battery at the Battle of Buena Vista.^[6] In 2011 the journal Paper Money returned to the story. Its authors spelled his initials "W.P." and dated the article to fall 1913. They traced the people involved and searched museums for the three stones without finding them.^[7]

Family and later life

A 1904 history of Confederate memorial associations lists Mrs. W. F. Spurlin as president of the Ladies' Memorial Association of Camden. Its report from Camden says she was among those who first decorated the graves of Confederate soldiers there.^[8] A Find a Grave memorial in Camden Cemetery records Catharine James Hubbard Spurlin (2 September 1836 – 25 October 1906) as the "beloved wife of William F. Spurlin." It links three of their children, all of whom died before her.^[9]

On 26 December 1915 the Montgomery Advertiser reported that "Veteran W. F. Spurlin, aged 92 years," had died in the hospital at the Alabama Soldiers' Home at Mountain Creek on 23 December. The notice mentioned his service in Company F, 53rd Alabama, said he had formerly lived in Wilcox County, and said he was buried on 24 December.^[10] His Find a Grave memorial gives the death date as 24 December 1915 and his burial place as Confederate Memorial Park Cemetery No. 2 in Chilton County. The headstone inscription it records reads "Co, F, 53rd Ala Partisan Rangers Confederate States Army."^[11] A biography on the memorial, compiled by a contributor from census and newspaper records, says he was born in Alabama in November 1823 and married "Catherine Jane Hubbard" in 1855. It adds that he enlisted at Montgomery on 20 November 1862, reopened his Camden store in June 1869 and sold his Camden home in 1911. It also notes that newspapers around 1900 called him "Col. Spurlin", perhaps because he was active in the United Confederate Veterans.^[11]