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By Bit Lucas REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER Beckley firefighters took care of a potentially explosive situation Monday afternoon when they removed an old piece of ordinance from a woman’s backyard. Neighborhood handyman Granville Bragg was helping Flicka Graves, of 115 Austin Ave., dig holes in her back yard to plant trees and bush es when he hit what he thought was a rock. “I was planting this bush and he was digging a hole to plant it near the back porch,” Graves said. “Then he said, ‘Well that’s the soundest rock I've ever seen.’ Bragg kept digging around the hard object. He finally had to go and get a bigger shovel. Once he had it dug up, Graves could see it was per fectly round. When they put it in the yard, it rolled over. They saw it was all covered in rust and mud, so they hosed it off with water. “I thought it was a petrified basketball or a bowling ball or something until it rolled out and I saw the fuse on the end of it,” Graves said. “When I saw that fuse on the end of it, I thought ‘I'm not touching this thing.’ Because it was real, real heavy.” Graves said the house was built in 1929 and her grand parents moved there in 1930. Nobody else lived there, because she moved in after they passed away. Beckley firefighters arrived, examined the object and told Graves it was the real thing. They removed it from the scene and notified the state Fire Marshal’s office. Cpt. Dave ‘Tolliver described the cannonball as being eight inches in diame ter and weighing about 30 pounds. He said it had a 2- inch fuse and was full of gun powder. Jody Mays, a local researcher of the Civil War, said by the description the cannonball may be the type used with a 24-pound field howitzer. Troops from both sides of the conflict passed through Beckley on a regular basis, he said. The town was bombarded in 1863 by federal troops under Col. John McCausle and. “That piece had a range, at 5 degrees, of right at, of a mile,” Mays said. “There were several skirmishes in and around here about that time. It could have been used back then, but I'd say it was lost.” The firefighters placed the cannonball in a public truck filled with sand. The state Fire Marshal’s explosive ordnance disposal team arrived later last night, and they took it to the police rifle range on Eisenhower Dri ve and blew it up. AMMUNITION: Granville Bragg, left, and Flicka Graves stand by and watch as Lt. Jack Hardin and FFC Tom Peal hoist a cannonball from the Photo courtesy of Jim Wood ground and carry it out to the truck. Bragg found the old piece of ordnance when he was digging in Graves’ backyard.
Newspaper Details
Beckley Register Herald
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Tue, Aug 26, 1997
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Laura A.
USA 22 Jun 2026
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