Gone With The Wind shipwreck relic by Dr. E. Lee Spence $49.95
This certificate takes an authentic relic from a Civil War shipwreck and combines it with the romance of Rhett Butler in "Gone With The Wind."
Get one for a friend or for your home or office. They are just $100 each and will be sent rolled in a mailing tube.
These are Civil War blockade-runner shipwreck relic certificates that I had prepared in 1989. Only a very limited number are still available.
The certificates have been hand signed by me, numbered and witnessed by a notary. Each one has a brass sewing pin attached that I salvaged from the wreck of the Civil War steamer Georgiana, which I discovered in the 1960s.
The attached relic (a brass sewing pin) is not only over 135 years old, it was part of a valuable cargo owned by George Trenholm. Trenholm was Treasurer of the Confederacy and was the "real Rhett Butler" in Gone With The Wind.
This pin was part of the Georgiana's cargo of munitions, merchandise and munitions. Pins were extremely scarce during the Civil War and are mentioned in numerous books, including Gone With The Wind.
The certificates are approximately 13" high and 18.5" wide. They are printed on archival quality, laid paper and I did the map in the old style giving it an antique look. A number of Civil War shipwrecks are depicted on the map.
In the Siege of Charleston 1861-1865, Milby Burton (former curator of the Charleston Museum) wrote “Common pins became so scarce that they were hoarded like precious jewels”.
One Southern woman who lived through the Civil War later wrote in the book Women of the Confederacy that “the loss of a sewing needle became a household calamity.”
In Gone With The Wind, Rhett “blockaded in” pins for the ladies “at the risk of his life.” For Christmas, Scarlett gave Ashley the “whole precious pack of needles Rhett had brought her from Nassau.”
Spence's research on the pins eventually led to his discovery that certain incidents in Trenholm's life were the historical basis for the dashing Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's Civil War epic, Gone With The Wind. In fact, Mitchell had to play Trenholm down to make Rhett seem more believable.
To read more about the real Rhett Butler go to: Discovery of the "real Rhett Butler" by Dr. E. Lee Spence http://knol.google.com/k/dr-e-lee-spence/discovery-of-the-real-rhett-butler-by/9a3pk7ykcgda/3#
To read more about the wreck of the Georgiana go to: Shipwreck 1863 “Georgiana” | Sea Research Society Online http://www.searesearchsociety.com/2010/09/shipwreck-1863-georgiana/
