ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996 TAG: 9610070053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG
SOURCE: Associated Press
A CIVIL WAR cannonball that had been bolted to the museum's wall since the late 1930s was stolen this week.
It was just a typical Civil War cannonball, worth $100 to $150 to a collector.
But to the James Monroe Museum, it was literally part of the architecture - until vandals pried the ball from the museum's brick facade this week.
The 12-pound cannonball did not crash into the front of the museum during a battle. Museum officials believe it was bolted to the wall sometime during the late 1930s when the museum was owned and operated by the late Laurence Gouveneur Hoes.
Still, museum director John Pearce said Friday, it was a symbol of Fredericksburg's Civil War heritage.
``In a city like Fredericksburg, which was in the middle of spectacular battles during the Civil War and where people have remembered it ever since, anything that marked it has great sentimental value,'' he said.
Lt. Leigh Collins of the Mary Washington College Police Department said campus police located an antique dealer who bought a cannonball this week. The dealer sold the cannonball to a California tourist on Thursday.
But there is no way to know whether it was the cannonball taken from the museum Monday. ``As the dealer said, one iron ball looks like any other iron ball,'' she said.
Mary Washington College administers the museum, which is in a building where Monroe practiced law in the 1780s.
Lee Langston-Harrison, curator of the museum, was most concerned about the damage done to the outside of the building. A large area of the wall will have to be replaced, she said, and finding 180-year-old brick to match the rest of the wall will not be easy.
Pearce said repairing the brick wall probably will cost $500 to $1,000.
``The first thing we'll do is study the actual structure behind where the cannonball was and see what we can learn,'' he said. ``I'll confess that it will give us a chance to see something we haven't seen before, which is evidence of original scarring.
``It's conceivable that we'll decide to put another [cannonball] back there,'' he said.
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