The T.L. Pruett D-guard Knife

Manufactured in Autauga County

When the secession crisis reached a fever pitch in 1860, forty-year-old T. L. Pruett, a native Kentuckian, was plying his trade just east of Montgomery, Alabama in Autauga County. Pruett was a blacksmith by trade and evidently a very skilled artisan judging by the workmanship exhibited in his D-guard knives. The huge weapon he produced was of the very highest quality.

It is now known that Pruett made a D-guard knife for each of the Autauga Guard that enlisted between September 16, 1861, when the Company first formed, and the first week in October, 1861. Pruett supplied all 39 enlisted men in Captain Faulkner’s Autauga Guard with a huge iron mounted D-guard knife with a nineteen inch blade, as witnessed by the October 19, 1861 edition of Vanity Fair published in Boston, Massachusetts under the heading:

At the time the article was written in a "Southern Journal" the Autauga Guard thought they were headed for Richmond, Virginia; instead they became Company G, Blythe’s Regiment, 44th Mississippi Infantry and served out the war in the Army of Tennessee.

The 44th Mississippi association has led to a fascinating discovery. We have been looking at a War era photograph of one of Pruett’s knives all through the years.

This fabulous photograph is the 44th Mississippi’s very heavily armed Andrew and Silas Chandler.

Andrew is holding a Pruett D-guard!

In June of 1862, Pruett enlisted in the 15th Battalion Alabama Partisan Rangers, Company A, the Fleming Freeman Rebels at Camp Forrest, Alabama. Pruett’s metalworking skill must have attracted attention, for the following June Major General Buckner ordered him to Mobile to work on C. S. gunboats. Pruett’s ultimate fate is unknown, though a year later he was listed on the Ranger’s rolls as being on detached service by order of General Buckner.

It is fortunate that Pruett took such pride in his work, otherwise like countless other Confederate weapon makers, he would have faded into oblivion.

The D-guard that Pruett created is a whopping twenty-two and a half inches long, with a nineteen inch blade and is over two inches wide and a quarter inch thick! The flat spear point blade has a three inch reverse edge. The handgrip is made of walnut, set into two heavy iron ferrules. The guard is made as heftily as the rest of the knife, measuring over an eighth of an inch thick and an inch wide.

The Pruett knife featured on this page has the best provenance of the four existing knives. This exact knife was displayed at the Ohio Historical Society in the early 1960’s as part of the Abel’s collection. It was photographed, catalogued and published by the Historical Society in April, 1962. This Confederate artifact was recently offered for sale at:

Old South Military Antiques

http://www.oldsouthantiques.com

Printed with permission from Old South Military Antiques, Studley, VA

Continue_to_page_2