For 30 years, Jim Way looked after a sword that was once sealed in darkness and remains shrouded in mystery.
He never took the rusted weapon to an expert for analysis and never did his own research on its backstory. He had always called it the “Civil War sword,” and that was as close as he came to pinning down its origin.
To this day, Way has remained just as the sword was before his family discovered it — in the dark. But he likes it that way, he says.
“Not knowing, you can speculate,” he says. “Once you know, it cuts off all the theories. It’s been a fun thing for the family and it still is.”
Way’s father and brother found the sword in 1959 while salvaging lumber from the house, located on what is now Salem Road in Dorchester.
“They happened to notice some of the (wall) boards were short, not like the rest that ran the length of the room,” he says. “Their curiosity got the best of them.”
They plucked the sword from inside the wall and Way’s father was its keeper until his death in 1979. Way, his brother and three sisters drew numbers as they split up their father’s material belongings. Way drew No. 5.
“I wanted the sword desperately,” he says.
His siblings deferred to him. “I ended up with the sword by the graces of my brother and sisters,” he says.
Like his father before him, Way liked to show off the sword. He kept it in a display case in his home where it remained a reliable conversation piece.
Theories on the sword’s history flourished under Way’s ownership. Everyone asked the same question: why it was sealed away in the wall?
Way’s family bought the house in the 1930s or 1940s, he recalls. The son of the man who built it in the early 1900s had no idea that the sword was there, or why it was there,” he says.
“Maybe someone was killed with it or maybe it was stolen,” he says. “I speculate that it was probably something worse than theft. I can’t imagine someone building it into the wall of a house just because it was stolen.”
Way, who turns 72 this month, followed through on an old promise last week and mailed the sword to his 65-year-old brother in California. He figures he’s had it for 30 years, now it’s time to let someone else enjoy it.
Way says his only request is that his brother bequeath the sword to the Dorchester County Historical Society, of which Way is an active member. His brother agreed.
Way has resisted finding out more about the sword, but the Web site arms2armor.com has photos of a weapon that looks similar.
According to the Web site description, the U.S. Model 1860 Field and Staff Officer’s Sword was a 33.5-inch sword carried by officers on both sides and was not very effective in combat.

Contact David Berman at 873-9424 ext. 214 or dberman@journalscene.com