Modified 1861 Cartridge Box With Fleece Lined Interior For Use With .50/70 Cartridges.

With the Springfield Armory’s issuing the breechloaders converted from 1861 Rifle Muskets, the 1865 and 1866 breechloading rifles needed a better means of carrying metallic ammunition. This process of developing an new cartridge box began in late 1865. The task was given to Major James G. Benton, and his assistance Corporal Michael C. Leonard. Leonard lined a “leather pouch,” then inserted 10 cartridges and shook the pouch for on hour, then added an addition 10 cartridges, and repeated the process 2 times more until he had the full compliment of 40 cartridges in the pouch.  The test was made to see if any movement within the fleece, as the cartridges were loose, would prevent setting off the new self primed cartridges. More tests followed with harsher methods employed to determine the safety of the box. Later, in January of 1867, Leonard patented his “Improvement In Cartridge Boxes, on January 22, 1867, Patent No. 61,345.  This is the start of the Government producing in quantity these fleece lined 1861 Infantry cartridge boxes.*

*  Far more detailed information can be read in a new article by Fred Gaede, entitled Notes on Fleece-Lined Boxes and Pouches for Metallic Cartridges, 1865-1870, in the recent Company of Military Historians Journal, Vol.77, No.2 – Summer 2025.

This 1861 pattern cartridge box was produced under contract by GAYLORD, CHICOPEE, MASS. and is an unissued box. This is a variant fleece lined box by using two rivets on each side to held hold the wool in place. I am assuming the iron rivets were used to keep the wool in place, as moisture, wear, loose stitching might allow the fleece to come loose and make the box un-serviceable.

Dry from poor storage, but complete. Crazed leather is mostly on the flap, and less elsewhere. Two of the iron rivets on the left side are rusted.  There a few holes, one each in sling guide leather straps, and another on the right side. The ones on the back show there were rivets there at one time.  These may be the result of the box being use to test how best to insert the leather and keep it firmly in place.

The immediate post Civil War years are an extremely fascinating period for the American Army, in its struggle to find the appropriate arms and their accoutrements with so many firearm improvements all around the World. The wool fleece lined box is just one of many cartridge boxes experimented with by the Army.

For the most part, these boxes have gone virtually unnoticed in the collecting world, but that will change with more studies coming out, and when collectors, like there ancestors, move “westward” to new collecting territory.