Three ringer id

[toasted]

Found this today. Found lots of roundballs in this area but this is my first three ringer. Someone please educate me on type and age if possible

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[TheCannonballGuy]

It is a generic "3-groove" Minie bullet (a.k.a. Minie-ball) manufactured from the late-1850s into the 1870s, when muzzleloader bullets fell out of favor with the public due to the advent of metallic-cartridge ammunition. Of course, the vast majority were manufactured during the civil war years. Both the yanks and rebels made 3-groove Minies... yours could be either, but the yanks made a LOT more, so the odds favor it being yankee-made.

We'd need precise measurement to be sure of its caliber... but based on comparison with the size of your finger in the phot, it looks like a .58-caliber.

 

[toasted]

Thanks. This area has no civil war history that I am aware of so probably civillian and probably pre dates the civil war as most of my finds here do

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

I think your 3-groove Minie bullet is more likely to be from during the civil war or afterward than before it. In the US, that version of .58-caliber Minie bullet was developed in the mid-1850s by the US Army and wasn't available for civilian use. After the war, many thousands of "war surplus" .58 US Springfield rifles were sold to the public, as big-game hunting rifles. Of course, bulletmolds were sold with them, so you could make your own ammunition.

I should also mention... although there may have been no civil war combat in your area of Maryland, soldiers were active everywhere. Frequent sources of civil war bullets and equipment are State Militia training-camps, which could be located hundreds of miles away from any battle. For example, people have dug Minie bullets, US Army belt-buckles, and bayonets at civil war training camps in Michigan and California.