🥇 BANNER KILLER CIRCA 1850S MILITIA BELT PLATE!!

Steve in PA

Gold Member
Jul 5, 2010
9,600
14,217
Pittsburgh, PA
🥇 Banner finds
4
Detector(s) used
Fisher F75, XP Deus, Equinox 600, Fisher 1270
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Saturday I wanted to get out for a while, but my options are limited this time of year. I drove down to a circa 1790-1815 house site hoping that the farmer had cut the hay. He had cut it, but he hadn’t bailed it yet, so that field was unhuntable. So I drove over to another of his farms that has a standing, but abandoned, house on it that looks like it could date to the 1830s. I call this place the buckle graveyard because all I ever find here is horse tack buckles. I have dug about two dozen horse tack buckles here, but I have never found anything good, not even an Indian Head penny.

I had only been detecting a few minutes when I got a sweet signal on the Deus, dug down about 6 inches, and pulled out a modern bullet. I thought this can’t be what I was hearing, so I checked the hole again and the sweet signal was still there. I dug a little deeper and still could not pick anything up with the pinpointer. Finally down about 13 inches, the pinpointer started going off. When I got to the target I thought it was probably a piece of junk as it was laying straight up and down and all I could see was an edge sticking up, When I pulled it out I was shocked to see a mid 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century militia plate. I had always wanted to dig one of these. This plate now ranks pretty high on my all-time favorite finds list.

Further research shows this property on the 1856 County Atlas as belonging to W. Allen. A search of militias from the county shows William Allen as a private in Company A of the Sixth Pennsylvania Militia, which mustered in on September 13[SUP]th[/SUP] 1862 for the defense of the State of Pennsylvania during the Antietam campaign. They marched as far east as Chambersburg, PA, encamped and awaited orders to move against the Confederates. They were mustered out on September 29[SUP]th[/SUP] 1862. William Allen died in 1881 and the names of other local residents appear on his will as executor and witnesses. Considering these facts, and the time frame when these buckles were popular, this is almost certainly William Allen’s militia uniform belt buckle.

Plate Dirt-1.jpg Plate in Hand Dirty.jpg

Plate in Hand.jpg Plate in Hand Dirty Back.jpg

Plate Front.JPG Plate Back.JPG

Here is the plate in Michael J. O'Donnell's "American Military Belt Plates"
Plate in Book.JPG

And here it is in it's new home :icon_thumright:
Plate in Case.jpg

Thanks for looking and good luck out there!
 

Last edited:
Upvote 113
Steve - I just had to join in the chorus of congratulatory replies on such a great belt plate find. I can tell by the excellent photos, your treatment in cleaning the plate, and the excellent narrative that this find means a lot to you - and why shouldn't it? It's an impressive plate in an excellent state of preservation. It's good that you have the photos as they will always provide a lucid connection to that moment when you saw the plate come out of the ground - recovery of such finds is always a mind-blowing experience. That's why we do what we do - all the research, the door knocking, the searching and digging - to have that experience.
Thanks STC, you really summed it all up right there. I know you treat your finds the same way.
 

Wow! Congrats on an awesome find!
 

Wow Steve that’s a beauty find! Congrats on the BANNER
 

This is amazing! Definitely one of my favorites I’ve seen so far on the site. Must be intense holding something like in your hands. I’m from PA as well, Frank is there a club around ?
-Cole Marie
 

Well done Steve,amazing plate and great research.
 

Congrats on your banner.
 

Congrats on the find! WOW
 

Wow Steve! And I asked you if you’d been out much this summer. Ha!

Absolute killer find and the provenance is outstanding.
 

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