Not the US Cavalry Piece

[ShortbusElite]

Do you guys have any idea what the ornate clip looking piece is?

 

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[TheCannonballGuy]

Thank you for including the photo of a US 1-cent coin next to your find, to show its size. It is too small to be a suspenders-strap adjuster buckle.

I believe your find is the strap-adjuster buckle/clip from a late-1800s/early-1900s men's socks garter. See the scan of a newspaper advertisement from that time-period, for the "Boston Garter," which was patented in 1895. Note that the illustration shows (on the strap-end at upper right) the brass strap-adjuster buckle/clip is about the same size as your find, and it has the same projecting "tongue" to hold the cord.

 

[ShortbusElite]

Wow, I never knew such a thing existed. How about the US accoutrement? What is your opinion on the age of it?

 

[DCMatt]

Wow, I never knew such a thing existed. How about the US accoutrement? What is your opinion on the age of it?

Is the US item mounted on a piece of leather? I first thought 'collar disk', but not if it's on leather.

May we see the back of it?

 

[creskol]

It is a WWI era harness strap accoutrement.

 

[DCMatt]

It is a WWI era harness strap accoutrement.

 

[BLK HOLE]

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[ShortbusElite]

It definitely is not a collar disk. It is in fact mounted on leather as it still has some attached to it.

 

[DCMatt]

creskol got it. WWI era horse harness brass.

 

[ShortbusElite]

Update: I just took took the US cavalry piece into the Wilson Creek Museum and showed my piece to the curator. He said it is undoubtedly Civil War period. Here are pictures of my piece alongside another in the museum collection.

 

[creskol]

Huh .. perhaps the curator is misguided. .. or I have been misguided for 48 years.

 

[ShortbusElite]

Huh .. perhaps the curator is misguided. .. or I have been misguided for 48 years.

Not sure Creskol. He said "without a doubt." I told him that some people thought it was possibly WW1. He said that the later ones look very similar but the the lettering is slightly smaller I believe he said.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

The Wilson Creek Museum's curator appears to be either uneducated or misinformed. It's sad that the average civil war Cavalry relics collector seems to know more about the relics than typical civil war museum staff do.

Persons wanting to CORRECTLY identify and time-date a military relic should pay close attention to the object's form/shape and its construction, meaning, what material(s) it is made of. Civil war horse-harness accouterment discs were made of either solid-cast brass ("bit bosses") or low-convex thin stamped sheetbrass filled with solder which held brass or iron attachment wires. In the Indian Wars era, the discs changed to having a sheet-iron back. By the early 1900s, that version was replaced with the type you found, which has no "back" component and uses integral fold-over tabs for attachment to the leather.

Creskol and DC Matt are correct, your stamped-sheetbrass horse/mule harness "domed" US accouterment disc with three integral attachment-tabs on its rim is definitely from the early-1900s through the present. Although the US Army almost entirely quit using horses around the start of World War Two, some are still used for Ceremonial purposes... which includes this version of horse-harness & US-marked accouterments.

The photos below show:
The civil war through Span-Am War solid-cast brass "bit boss" disc, with holed "ears" for attachment,
The civil war cavalry rosette having a solder-filled back with (badly rusted) iron wire attachment loops,
the Indian-Wars-through-Span-Am-War sheet-iron back, and
the 20th-Century "integral tabs."

 

[DCMatt]

the average civil war Cavalry relics collector

Let me be the first to say that CBG is hardly "average" when it comes to knowledge about and experience with Civil War relics.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Well, thanks, DC Matt. But truthfully, in my opinion, almost any "non-novice" collector of civil war to WW1 US Cavalry militaria knows the form and time-period of the various US-marked accouterments. Owning various "collectors' relic reference books" is part of that. If the Wilson's Creek Battlefield Museum is a US National Park Service facility, such books are probably in its reference library, easily available for the Curator to read. Most US-NPS civil war Battlefield Park museums have such a library, containing excellent collector-written reference books, such as those on buckles, buttons, swords, bullets, Cavalry equipment, artillery projectiles, etc.