Blue and Gray in Tampa Bay Opens at the Tampa Bay History Center

Call it Southern pride but, after the Union Navy launched a cannon ball into the living room of the Ferris home in 1862 - one of several bombardments of Tampa - the family never bothered to repair the hole.

Now, that cannon ball, along with Civil War-era maps, weaponry, photographs and reproduction uniforms will be on exhibit during Blue and Gray in Tampa Bay: The Civil War on Florida’s Gulf Coast opening at the Tampa Bay History Center on January 10th.

In Florida, the third state to secede from the Union in 1861, confrontations between Confederate and Union troops raged along the Gulf Coast. Learn about stealthy Confederate blockade runners and Florida’s “Cow Cavalry,” plus find out how the War Between the States affected Secessionists, Unionists, slaves and women in the Tampa Bay area. In addition, the History Center will feature the traveling exhibit Florida in the Civil War, on loan from the Orange County Regional History Center.

The Union Army fired this cannon ball

into the Ferris home in 1862.

TBHC Collection.

“The opening date of January 10th is significant,” said the History Center’s Saunders Foundation Curator of History, Rodney Kite-Powell. “Florida seceded from the Union exactly 150 years ago, on January 10, 1861.”


Blue and Gray in Tampa Bay will be on exhibit through April 2011 in the History Center’s third floor gallery.

Stay tuned to this blog for more Civil War stories and updates about programs and events related to the exhibit.

For more information about the exhibition and related programming, visit our website or call (813) 228-0097.