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THB[CIVIL WAR] Army Brogans from Ft. Pembina, North Dakota
![[CIVIL WAR] Army Brogans from Ft. Pembina, North Dakota](https://s1.img.bidsquare.com/item/xl/3295/32953622.jpeg?t=1V3kbB)
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About Auction
LiveNov 22, 2025
This exclusive catalog presents a select offering from the personal collection of Alejandro "Alex" de Quesada Jr., renowned historian, author, and collector. The catalog features exceptionally rare swords, historically significant belt buckles and military insignia, original Civil War flags, and a wide range of ephemera representing pivotal moments in military history. Fleischer's Auctions info@fleischersauctions.com
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- Lot Description
AN EXCEPTIONALLY WELL‑PRESERVED PAIR OF U.S. ARMY‑ISSUE BROGANS, EXCAVATED AT THE FORMER SITE OF FORT PEMBINA IN NORTH DAKOTA
United States, circa 1860–1880. Blackened leather uppers with plain facings pierced for laces, straight lasts; leather outsoles secured by pegs and edge nails, stacked leather heels with iron nails; without laces. Note: Excavated with permission private property. Each approx. 10 1/2 x 4 x 5 1/4 in.
A matched pair of regulation army brogans of the type supplied by U.S. Quartermaster contractors during the Civil War and on the post–Civil War frontier. Each shoe exhibits a single‑piece vamp and quarters, unreinforced eyelets, and pegged soles; heels of multiple leather lifts. The soles retain clear peg and nail patterns; the uppers show original creasing across the vamps and minimal shrinkage, testifying to the rare survival of the leather and the original last shape.Fort Pembina’s far‑northern location, long winters, deep frost, and cold, relatively anaerobic ground conditions created an exceptional micro‑environment that retarded the decay of organic materials. Complete, matched pairs of U.S. army brogans from field context almost never survive; most period examples encountered archaeologically are fragmentary singles. This pair, retaining their form, soles, and heels, offers a rare and vivid artifact of the daily life of enlisted soldiers on the northern frontier. As a documented recovery from a named post, and in such extraordinary condition, the brogans constitute an important and seldom available specimen for collections of nineteenth‑century military uniform and frontier archaeology.
Fort Pembina (1870–1895) was set in the Red River Valley of what is now Pembina County, North Dakota, only a few miles from the Canadian border, Fort Pembina was established in March 1870 and occupied until 1895. Earlier activity at the site centered on the fur trade; the first U.S. military presence was a temporary post garrisoned by Minnesota troops in 1863–64 following the Dakota (Sioux) Uprising of 1862. The permanent post was built south of the Pembina River and roughly 200 yards west of the Red River; completed in July 1870, it was initially named for Gen. George H. Thomas and redesignated Fort Pembina in September. The first garrison, two companies of the 20th U.S. Infantry, wore and carried the typical mix of the early Indian Wars: Civil War surplus, private‑purchase items, and later regulation patterns as they became available.
The fort’s stated purpose was to protect settlers concerned about Sioux parties returning from Canada, but its soldiers chiefly escorted international boundary surveys along the 49th parallel and helped deter Fenian raiding attempts into Canada. The reservation contained enlisted men’s barracks and officers’ quarters, a guardhouse, ordnance storehouse, company kitchens, a root house, laundresses’ quarters, housing for civilian employees, a hospital with a servants’ house and a barn for the “hospital cow,” as well as quartermaster and commissary offices and storehouses, stables, and a wagon shed. Strength peaked at about 200 troops in 1878, with an average of roughly 125 enlisted men and 8 officers. An October 1885 return lists 97 men, 2 field pieces, 1 mountain howitzer, 100 rifles, 19 pistols, 23 mules, and 9 wagons. By 1890 only 23 soldiers remained, and after a fire in 1895 destroyed nineteen buildings the Army elected to close rather than rebuild; the last detachment departed in September. The reservation passed to the Department of the Interior and was sold in 1902. Recent, owner‑authorized excavations on private land at the site have yielded artifacts of exceptional preservation, owing to the region’s cold, protective soils, of which the present pair of brogans is a rare survivor.
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