Thread: Straight razor Original owner stories

This pair infuriates me.



I got them from completely separate vendors, hundreds of miles apart who got them from completely different estate auctions and just happened to put up auctions that ended within 20 minutes of each other. Both razors have an owner's name and town engraved on the pile side.



One name is very hard to read, the other is too common to track, despite the very tiny town of Danville, Ohio. (The other appears to be John {something} from Woodstock, Ohio).

My best guess is that they were gifts or commemorative items to members of the Grand Army of the Republic (a veterans organization for Union soldiers), but I can't track them.

The razors themselves were made around or after 1851, as this newspaper ad attests: