WWI Cannon was on the Liberty County, TX courthouse lawn until WWII

After World War I, the U.S. government suddenly found itself sitting on hundreds of captured German artillery pieces. The Army didn’t have any use for them, but members of Congress soon discovered that small towns across America were more than happy to give those big old guns a home—so long as they picked up the shipping tab.

In early 1919, Texas Congressman Alexander W. Gregg introduced a bill to send one captured German cannon or fieldpiece each to Galveston, Liberty, and Palestine. Liberty made the list because a local resident, R. W. Humphreys, asked Gregg to include his hometown.

Gregg died on April 30, 1919, before the bill could advance, but the idea didn’t die with him. The next month, Congressman Clay Stone Briggs introduced a new bill that expanded the list, proposing German cannon for Galveston, Palestine, Crockett, Conroe, Groveton, Livingston, Liberty, Anahuac, Huntsville, and Coldspring.

Some later accounts mistakenly claim the German gun in Liberty belonged to the Carroll Hylton American Legion Post No. 450. Contemporary articles from 1942 clear that up: the Legion organized the fundraising drive to pay the shipping costs—required by the federal government in 1919—but the cannon itself was officially given to the City of Liberty.

The old gun was painted silver.

By 1942, with World War II raging, the question came up whether Liberty should donate the cannon to the national scrap metal drive. The city agreed, and the old German fieldpiece was turned over in December of that year. So, in an ironic twist, the Germans provided a cannon in WW I that helped defeat them in WW II.

And now you know … the rest of the story. And I feel like Paul Harvey.