- Joined
- Apr 24, 2010
- Messages
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- Location
- Upper Canada 🇨🇦
- 🥇 Banner finds
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- Detector(s) used
- XP Deus, Lesche Piranha 35 Shovel & 'Garrett Carrot'
- Primary Interest:
- Relic Hunting
Yesterday morning, I took a long 2km walk up an old pioneer road to a site that I first detected 5 years ago.
This site dates from 1840 — 70 and likely burnt due to the amount of visible damage to the ceramics and melted glass I’ve found here. Well the land all around this site is now being developed, so I thought, it’s now or never! It was at this site that I found my first and only 1835 ‘holed’ US LC. It was slow going detecting in between the corn stalks. The farmers tractor has been sitting on the next field over since the beginning of the week, but it hasn’t moved. My first decent find was a very black looking 1859 Canada LC. I’m thinking this coin was likely inside the house when it burnt due to the amount of surface damage to the coin. My second find was a brass two-piece button at the edge of the site with a three-legged eagle and writing around the border. 
Vintage ‘Esx Devs Spes Nostra - God Is Our Hope’ Hessian Revolutionary War Brass Button.
"On the front of the button is the image of a 3-legged eagle surrounded around the rim with the words "ES DEVS SPES NOSTRA". Online research reveals the writing is Latin and means, "GOD IS OUR HOPE". This button may be a reproduction / remake of buttons worn by Hessian soldiers during the Revolutionary War." Further online research reveled that the eagle is a Teutonic Eagle. Large contingents of German troops, commonly lumped together under the term "Hessians," were hired by the British during the American Revolution to fight in North America. The army force maintained here by the King comprised 35% of the Hessians drawn mainly from the principalities of Hesse Cassel, Brunswick, Hesse Hanau, Waldeck, and other smaller German states. Buttons from all these regiments were plain, and without any sort of unit designation. Flat-faced with a very pronounced boss on the backs, into which an iron-wire eye was anchored, these buttons originally were made of tombac (copper/zinc alloy), or thin brass, depending on the color of the regiments' metal.
During the US Revolutionary War period, the regulation white-metal buttons, identical to Hessian buttons, were imported (until 1793) from Birmingham (England) and worn by the ranks of the British Army. Also, it is reasonable to assume that flat or solid white-metal buttons of this type were cast in sand or in two or three-piece hand molds by colonial metal workers throughout most of the 18th century. As the 18th century progressed, the Hessian buttons became both larger and more common. Most buttons have brass or copper wire loop shanks. As a rule, they are virtually indistinguishable from civilian buttons of the same period. The latter were in use until the late-1900s. These men were often mercenaries used by the British during the Revolutionary War in the US."
Modern 19thc blazer buttons of this type are often found, which is what this example likely is. I found the old bicycle bell cover on the road on my way back to my truck.
Thanks very much for looking,
Dave
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