Button I.D.

GaRebel1861

GaRebel1861

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Jun 16, 2011
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I got a chance to go out and hunt an old home site here in Southwest Georgia this morning with fyrffytr1 and Wayfas4u. This home site and the area around it has produced several nice finds over the past few years including several confederate buttons and period coins. Today wasn't real productive but I did dig this button Only the front was there so there is no back mark. I thought maybe it could be a confederate engineer button ???

I've looked on line and some seem to me to be close but no exact matches. What do I have here? Any thoughts or comments are welcomed.
 

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I looked in my button book but couldn't find a Confederate button that matches this one. I tried rotating your picture but it doesn't come out well. Maybe you have it upside down? Hopefully someone here can decipher your letter or letters. Oh yeah, I don't like you!!!
 

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GaRebel1861 asked me to comment about his maybe-Confederate-letter button. The lettering style on the button is different from the style of any of the known Confederate-usage letter buttons (such as Old English, Manuscript Old English, and German Text). Therefore, I strongly suspected it is not a Confederate letter button. But on your behalf, I did extensive research to at least identify the letter. The letter-style has some resemblance to Old English lettering, but it doesn't match anything in the chart showing Old English lettering,below.

Also, on your behalf, I searched through all 8 pages (316 buttons) in the Waterbury Button Company's online catalog of letter-buttons... no matchup for your button, nor for its lettering style there.

However, after a lot of searching through the photos in the button-book by Alphaeus H. Albert, I did find a VERY-nearly-exact match for your button's letter. It is a letter H. In your photo, the letter is upside down. It is shown in the Albert button-book on a Connecticut "HLG" Hartford Light Guard button. Go to page 125 in that book, see the photo of button CT-22, and turn it upside down.

In my opinion, your button is a civilian-usage "Initial" button, such a Livery button. With its back missing, there's no way to narrowly time-date it. However, being a 2-piece button, using of an "Archaic" lettering style indicates it was made sometime between about 1835 and the end of the 1800s.
 

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Great job TCBG , I gave up couldn't figure what letters I was looking at, is that Waterbury list available online to print out, or is purchase only?
 

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It is the Waterbury Button Company's online sales-catalog... with thousands of photos. It is viewable for free, at:
Waterbury Button - Uniform Buttons, Fashion Buttons, Metal Buttons, Brass Buttons. Collectibles - Civil War Buttons, Titanic, Blazer Button Sets. - Waterbury Button

The "main" categories of buttons there are Military, Fashion, and Career Uniform (meaning Civilian uniform buttons, such as airlines, cruise-ship lines, hotel-staff, and even schools-&-university buttons, as well as Police and Fire Department buttons.

As I indicated in the partial list of Career Uniform button types, each of the "main" categories has many sub-categories. Examples are: crests, crest-with-crown, crown, letter, logo letter, animals, plants, etc. Although looking at page after page of buttons in the online catalog can be time-consuming, it can also be very much worth doing. Quite a few of the button-ID requests in this forum have been solved by digging through the Waterbury Button Company's online catalog.

That company has been manufacturing metal buttons for various uniforms and civilian-clothing "Fashion" buttons continuously ever since 1849. Believe me, MANY of its 1800s-era (and early-1900s) buttons are shown in the online catalog. They are still for sale from the company today, although they now have a different-looking backmark than they did when they were first manufactured. Thus, we can sometimes identify very-old buttons (especially the Civilian ones which aren't in the Military-buttons books) by searching through the Waterbury online catalog.
 

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Thank you for the link
 

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Thank you CannonBall for your time and assistance with this item. Also, thanks for the link!
 

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Yes many thanks CannonBall, I was with GaRebel when he found this button. My searches left me with no finds. Thanks for sharing the link!
 

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GaReb,
I am sorry your button didn't turn out to be what you hoped but look on the bright side, I like you again!:laughing7:
 

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fyrffytr1 said:
GaReb,
I am sorry your button didn't turn out to be what you hoped but look on the bright side, I like you again!:laughing7:
Click to expand...

There's some more C.S. out there in that field waiting for me! It looked like a possible good find but the Cannonball set it straight. (Thank you again C.B.) ->It is what it is! :icon_thumleft:
 

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