Just behind the modern fence at my apartment complex, while walking my dog today, I found a pretty darn old-looking barbed wire fence running parallel to it. Kind of an exciting discovery, for a history nerd like myself; my complex’s fence runs right along some old property line!
Anyway, I was wondering if I had any chance of dating the fence by the style of barbed wire it uses. I did a wee bit o’ research, and it strongly resembles Glidden’s original 1874 patent for barbed wire: http://www.barbwiremuseum.com/images/408b.gif
Not that I think it’s that old, granted, but it’s completely rusted out and looks very different from so-called “modern” barbed wire:
Anyone know how I can find out the period of usage for this type of barbed wire? Is it just gonna end up be a WAG?
Start here. If you don’t see it on that page, see if Devil’s Rope Museum can help. There’s an “appraisal” link somewhere on there, so they must have some ID experts.
You knew there had to be one (actually there is more than one) in the U.S. The staff at the barbed wire musuems in Texas and Kansas may be able to help if you send them a photo.
I’ve run accross a couple collections of the stuff, so I know somebody collects, organizes and has history on the stuff. The other posters mentioned, the types of places I’d look for. You could also see if the state historical society had some information.
Checking the county property records for that site might help, too.
At some point this property was plotted out, and the piece where your apartment building sits was sold to another owner. It’s likely that the fence was put up around that time.
One of the collections was at a steam and gas show. In other words old steam engines from the largest tractors to the smallest toys. They had small units for around the house. A belt went to the washing machine or the water pump. You moved it to the next chore.
As a kid, I lived on an farm which had been in occupation for many years before we moved in. Most of the older fence posts were made of Bois d’Arc wood (called Osage Orange in other places I think).
These fence posts often had remnants of several different fences where one fence had rusted through and been replaced many times. From the various types of barbed wire, we were able to place the fence post’s age - some were over 80 years old.
We had a small paperback called “The Bobbed-Wire Bible” which had drawings of many types of wire and it’s dates of manufacture. The 9th edition of that booklet is still available. you could probably find a copy at the library.
FWIW, the drawing you linked to shows a square cross-section wire, which is very old. A more common wire has the same type of barb, but with round wire. That wire dates back (WAG) to the 50’s and we were still buying it new in the early 70’s.
