Historic hobby

It wasn’t the usual dorm decoration for a college freshman. The rusty round canteen sitting on Frank Mrockza’s college desk looked like something you’d expect to find in a forgotten corner of a garage, but this canteen wasn’t left over from a childhood camping trip. More than 100 years before, it swung at the side of a Union soldier during the Civil War. That simple canteen ended a soldier’s thirst and began Mrockza’s passion for collecting Civil War artifacts.

For the past 25 years, Mrockza has built on the collection he started with the canteen. He’s found some prizes and fallen victim to some frauds, and he wants to help new collectors find more of the first and fewer of the second. He wrote “Starting Your First Civil War Collection” and will sign copies of it at Barnes & Noble in the Arena Hub Plaza in Wilkes-Barre Township on Saturday.

The canteen was the first item Mrockza, 46, bought for his own collection, but it wasn’t the first encounter the Dunmore lawyer had with Civil War memorabilia.

“My parents own an 1850s farmhouse in Jermyn,” Mrockza said. “When I was about 10 years old, I went up into the attic for the first time.” There was plenty up there to fascinate a young boy—his grandfather’s Polish National Army uniform, a 1917 World War I gun barrel, and something tucked way back in a corner that Mrockza just had to check out.

“It looked like a box, but when I pulled it out it was a huge picture of a whole bunch of soldiers. There were about 500 of them standing at attention,” Mrockza said. “There was something on it about Matthew Brady, and I had no idea who he was, and there was something on it that said copyright.”

He didn’t know what that meant, but Mrockza asked and found out how a copyright is issued. That led him to write to the Library of Congress. Someone there wrote back to tell young Mrockza that what he had was an original Civil War photo by famed photographer Matthew Brady, whom President Abraham Lincoln commissioned to document the war in the relatively new technique of photography. “I was fascinated that I had this in my house,” Mrockza said.

There was another surprise yet to come, too; tucked back behind the photo was a Confederate $2 bill. “That started it,” Mrockza said. “I wasn’t a fanatic, but I started reading about the war. Eventually, I discovered you could buy things like this; you didn’t have to find them all in your attic.”

This was before the days of the worldwide marketplace on the Internet and eBay, which puts war relics just a click or two away, so Mrockza had to do some work to feed his growing fascination. The backs of military magazines listed stores and sellers, and dealing with them led to more contacts, he said. He slowly started to build on that lone canteen.

“I was na�ve like most beginning collectors, and I ran into situations where I bought fake items. But I was fortunate to form relationships with some very good dealers, and I’ve had some of those relationships all these years,” Mrockza said.

He’s learned a lot over those years, and his collection has grown. While many of the items Mrockza has collected are from Gettysburg, he said his collection includes things from many other battles and from all different aspects of Civil War collecting. “I’ve found the neatest things from all over,” he said. “But most people are drawn to the famous big gun battles, and people who live near an area would have a natural affinity for the relics from that era.”

Collecting from a particular battle is only one of the many focuses a Civil War collection can have, Mrockza said. Some collectors concentrate on battlefield memorabilia, while others focus on the strategy or political aspects or amass Lincoln memorabilia. It can all be confusing and overwhelming for a beginner, so Mrockza wrote his book to share what he’s learned and help a new collector sort through the confusion and avoid some of the pitfalls.

With chapter titles such as “The Sound of Music,” “The Navy in the War,” “Medical Items” and “Collecting the Unique,” Mrockza walks the neophyte through where to start, what to collect and how to care for the new collection. He discusses what affects the value of the item but emphasizes the fun and joy to be had collecting things that are a glimpse into the past. “It was a tragic and romantic time in our American history,” he said.

Countless human stories are attached to these items, he said, and there’s “a natural desire to connect with something you have an interest in, something you missed.”

The book also includes dozens of photos from the war and of Mrockza’s own collection, especially one of his favorite pieces, a U.S. belt buckle with a map of enemy troop positions and the terrain of Confederate positions at Kennesaw Mountain, Ga., etched in the back. Carved into the soft lead back of the otherwise standard-issue belt buckle, the map indicates the buckle’s owner was a scout who used the ingenious technique of gathering information while still protecting himself from getting killed as a spy if caught, Mrockza said.

While he’s found a munitions box lid carved with a similar map showing a different vantage point of the same battlefield, Mrockza said, he’s never heard of another belt buckle with a hidden map. “To know something that valuable was lost, this is more than a simple utilitarian piece,” he said. “This was part of covert military operations. To know no one else in the world has it is just amazing.”

It’s one of the many one-of-a-kind things in Mrockza’s possession that makes collecting so fun for him. “Another unique thing is a 21-page sketch book drawn by a Pennsylvania soldier, Private Walter Dowell,” Mrockza said. Dowell was part of the emergency troops mustered when Lee invaded Pennsylvania, and his sketch book includes drawings of things the soldier saw around him, as well as some drawings that seem like political commentary.

It might intrigue him so much because Mrockza himself is an artist. He’s already painted a picture of General George Meade’s headquarters, which is reproduced in the book, and is working on a picture of General Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. But Mrockza said these aren’t just ordinary paintings. “I love to paint, and so I thought, why not use original tools from the Civil War period?” he said. His works are painted using a naval drafting set from the Civil War era as well as an easel from the same time frame. “I’m no Rembrandt,” he said, “but I thought it would be great to paint using the original tools.”

So Mrockza has added artist to the list of occupations that includes lawyer, collector and author. He intends to keep up all four and said his next writing effort likely will be a sequel to his first book, this time aimed at intermediate collectors. But mostly, he’ll keep collecting, acquiring objects sometimes just for the joy of being able to share them with others. He brings artifacts to his book signings and has had parts of his collection on display throughout the area.

“I just think it’s an honor to be able to collect this stuff and to share the collection and how to do it with people. I just feel honored and blessed to do it,” Mrockza said. And he considers it a privilege to bring attention to the items he’s collected, to give them the respect they deserve. “That’s the real reason for collecting,” he said. “It’s the dignity of the items and the dignity of the people who possessed them years ago.”

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Civil War buff pens book to help others find memorabilia

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About Frank Mrockza

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