Officer’s dress sword and scabbard, manufactured by Palmer & Bachelders, belonging to Captain Seth Bryant (1826-1888), c. 1860, 31.25” long. Gift of Miss Addie Bryant, 1951. Brick Store Museum Collection, 1936.2464

Mr. Seth Bryant (1826-1888) of Kennebunk, Maine, was known all over town in the mid 1800s for being the customs agent. This meant he was responsible for tracking all sorts of information related to the town’s major commerce of the day: ship building. In fact, historians have him to thank for much of our knowledge about the ships constructed during the Kennebunks’ shipbuilding heyday, for as part of Bryant’s job he had to record data about the vessel’s builder, tonnage, launch date, captain and crew.

When Bryant went off to fight in the Civil War, he was given a sword (pictured here) and pistol, each bearing the inscription: “Presented to Capt. S. E. Bryant by Friends in Kennebunk, Maine.” Bryant survived the war, and his sword has long been in the collections of the Brick Store Museum, because it was donated by his granddaughter. The pistol was a different story; the Museum was unaware of its whereabouts until staff were contacted by a collector in 2004 with some extraordinary news: he had a pistol bearing the inscription, “Presented to Capt. S. E. Bryant by Friends in Kennebunk, Maine”! Further research indicated that this was indeed the long-lost pistol. Tracing back, the pistol had for years been in the possession of an antiques dealer; one night, his store was robbed and among the item stolen was the pistol. Fortunately it was quickly recovered. The Museum ultimately purchased the pistol from the collector. So, after a long and illustrious history, Seth Bryant’s sword and pistol have been reunited for the first time since Seth Bryant’s day.

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