Experts needed

RustyRelics

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Apr 5, 2019
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Central PA
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I found this button last year, at a house that J.E.B. Stuart and his staff visited in 1862. This is CS17, in Tices button book, and is a very rare button to dig. William Leigh said he has heard of only 40, if that, ever being dug.

But I have some questions. Answer one, answer all, but I'd like some answers! :) Oh yeah, I included a non- dug pic, just so you can see what it looks like, clean.

1. What rank did you have to be at in order to where one of these?

2. Do any uniforms with these buttons exist today?

3. Who was on J.E.B.'s staff, and would they have worn these?

NSTCW22szg.jpgB7779A.jpg
 

Upvote 0
no idea here Beautiful button Love the Dirty pic Chug
 

Leave the dirt on it Unless you can find someone that can professionally clean it Great just the way it is to me
 

Not to nit pick but it is CS 17 in Albert's book. Tice lists it as CS233. I would assume that any rank of officer could have worn this button. I have attached a link to Jeb's staff but there were many officers under his command.

Stuart's Staff Officers
 

CreakyDigger posted a link to the same site before me so he wins!:laughing7:
 

There were thousands of staff officers in the Confederate army. I actually found a book with a list of them once upon a time ago. Any officer could have worn that button. Lt. and up. Also surgeons. I was surprised to see surgeons listed.
 

Being a 1-piece stamped-brass button, your CS-17 was made very early in the war. Being so extremely rare, they were most probably made for the officers of one particular regiment, as a "special customer order" with a button manufacturer. Another example of that is the super-rare "CS over A" button... made for the officers of a battery of the Louisiana Confederate Washington Artillery. The reason the A is below the CS on that button is, it stands for CS Artillery.

Looong ago (about 30 years), I dug one of the approximately 40 known excavated CS-17 "CS in Shield" brass 1-piece buttons at a Confederate entrenchment related to the 1862 Malvern Hill VA battle. Even that long ago, the place had been pounded really hard by the thousands of Richmond-area relic hunters. That day, I found only three relics... a .69 musketball, an iron musket-tool, and last of all, that button. It's the only civil war relic I ever found which has "the magic letters" on it.
 

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