When Bo DuBose was younger, he spent many a weekend following
his father around Civil War battle sites in search of artifacts.
They were quite good at it, amassing what is believed to be the
largest private collection of its kind, which includes more than
7,500 Union and Confederate objects. I have heard Bo talk about
his impressive collection on several occasions, about spending
holidays driving from historic site to historic site, his father
studying Civil War military journals in search of arms caches
with remarkable success. Their collection has been the backbone
of the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead since it opened. We’d
all love to have Bo’s skill and good fortune hunting for
artifacts, but most of us were equipped only with metal
detectors and our imaginations. Our backyard off West Wesley
Road in Buckhead yielded the occasional buried metal toy or
coin, nothing of any historic significance. Our grandparents’
backyard on Brighton Road in Brookwood Hills was another story.
Perhaps my cousins and my