One of my favorite items of Revolutionary War-era accoutrements is the canteen. Without it a soldier couldn’t stay hydrated and as such it was and still is an important part of their gear. With many being made from wood, they are rare survivors. I’ve been doing a lot of research on canteens made and issued in Massachusetts from 1756-1783 with an emphasis on the 1775 era. But there were also issues of canteens purchased by the Continental government, and original examples are quite rare.

A few weeks back, I went to pick up a few Civil War-era items in Massachusetts. The dining room table was laid out with an array of common swords, a naval officer’s belt, and a few other items including what the owner called a “War of 1812” canteen. I went down the list of items with the owners until I got to the canteen.

It had a label on one side marked “Canteen used/by William Fleming/of Oxford/township, Ches. Co. Pa/In the war of 1812.” It is a staved canteen with two interlocking hoops, a style used for many years, but as I picked it up and looked at the other side of the drum, I had to smile. It was branded “U:STATES” and was actually a Revolutionary War canteen! While it certainly could have been used during the War of 1812, this was a canteen with a Continental ownership stamp! I had seen a few of these in private collections and museums before, but never found one myself as there are only a handful known to exist.

A month before finding this canteen, I was at the National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir outside of Washington, DC. They have a similar example on display, formerly in the collection of Col. J. Craig Nannos. It has a very similar font branded on the drum, although the “S” on this example looks a little smaller and offset. I visited another example at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia last week, although that brand is marked “USTATES” without the colon.

I searched the service records at the National Archives for William Fleming from Oxford in Chester County, Pennsylvania and found one mentioned in the 4^th Battalion in 1776, as well as later in the war. I also found one in Pennsylvania during the War of 1812, although there wasn’t enough information to nail down where in Pennsylvania he was from.

I’ve been writing about canteens for another article I want to put together and had a few bad pictures of a U:STATES-marked canteen I was going to begrudgingly use (because of the picture quality), but now I have one can be photographed for my article before it is sold and goes to a new home. I know I mention this a lot, but it’s so cool to be able to find and handle such fantastic historic objects!