I was walking on a construction site south west of Franklin and found a cannon ball. It was “grape shot”, a small ball of about 3” across. They would put a number of them in the cannon at one time and shoot it off. However, I have no idea how it got where it was since it wasn’t in the area of the battle of Franklin, nor was it where the army traveled.
One rhetorical question one would want to ask himself would be was there a military camp site nearby. Near by as in a couple of miles, and was their a creek, river, or fresh water nearby. My gut feeling is most units camped out near them, especially if there was a spring near the creek or river, nothing like drinking fresh spring water. My understanding is alot of Federal records exist while most of the Confederate records don't. Also my gut feeling is most of the records that do exist are probably from the Division level or at something like that. I'm not sure about military unit sizes since I get them mixed up all the time, but the big unit sizes probably exist and the smaller unit sizes probably don't. Another issue would be just because a Division headquarters were at one location, doesn't mean that it's various smaller units were at that location but were more likely spread out over a few miles from that location, and if any cannon shooting went on the cannon shooting probably went on in those far off smaller unit camps, shooting their cannons off away from the other units. Another consideration would be was their any troop movement down a road nearby, my gut feeling is the cannon units were kept close to the front of a troop movement in case their was any sniper units or skirmishing units out front that needed to be cleared out, my understanding is grape shot(I'm not sure if that is what they called it.) was used effectively to push back skirmishing units and snipers way out in front of an approaching army, and or small reconnaissance units out looking for the enemies location etc. Another possibility would be was there any training/mustered in camps that might of been nearby. I'm told I need to end this comment and get breakfast etc. so I'm going to hit enter with out any more editing etc.