🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Artillery Button Help

anapisneeded

Newbie
Dec 14, 2023
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I'm hoping someone here can help ID this button. I have posted it on reddit but best suggestion was it was French.
Video:


It was found on a beach in North Carolina that has a history with American, British, German, and Spanish forces. I have done a ton of google searching with no luck. The crossed cannons are obvious, but the dome one piece shape of the button with the split ring has me for a loop. Help me out here folks.
 

A photo would help so a "image" search can be done.
Grabbed two screen shots from the video and cropped them for the OP.

20240721_235623.jpg
20240721_235635.jpg
 

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I have spent a lot of time searching google with no luck. I even started searching just for info about the split ring, and I did find that the british used split rings on some military buttons, but I couldn't find anything with info on dates, like when they were first developed.
 

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If I can't sleep again tonight, I'll do some more Google-fu and see if I can't find something.

This one is starting to aggravate me, I must have spent over two hours the other day looking at different buttons. It was @%&#$ me off!
 

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I've looked at American, British, Canadian, Dutch, French, German (Prussian), Portuguese, Russian, Spanish buttons.

Did a cursory search of South American, Cuba, etc, with no luck.

While I find some that are similar in construction, the defining difference is there is no Flaming Bomb, Crown, or Stacked Cannon Balls on yours.

At this point I'm dumbfounded and lost as to an ID. I tried, but man did I fail and almost went blind while at it. I'm seeing buttons in my sleep.
 

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Hi and nice find. I have a similar button without the four bombs nose to nose or odd weird shaped things on it. The tension "split ring" however I don't believe to be original because the the way the shank is attached is very early 1800s - pre-jump ring...they used soldered rings. I have several from the war of 1812 and my money is on that time. Now all we have to do is find another one. I'll do some searching tonight. Look carefully at all old pictures also, that mark will be easy to spot. One other thing, what are those three grinder looking marks from on the back?

dz
 

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I did spend time searching for French buttons back when I first found the button, and there are some like this that are close in design :
But the cannons are not like edge to edge sort of like on my button, and by the 1850's I think most everyone was using 2 piece buttons, whereas mine is 1 piece.
I want to use this for part of a museum display, but I can't until it can be identified and labeled correctly.
 

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I've looked at every country (Military) I can think of and have come up blank. I even tried checking to see if it was made for reenactments. No luck there either.

It's either an one off (Unlikely) or I'm not using the magic combination of words to find it. I'm officially stumped and intrigued at the same time.

OP if I was you I'd post over at the World Militaria Forum. Post it under their "Can you ID this" section. Get a nice straight on shot, showing the size of the cannons and lack of other iconography on the button.


Whatever you do, post back with what you find out.
 

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