24 Civil War Buttons

[steelheadwill]

Greetings all,
Great weather lately here in New Hampshire
As you may know, I always keep my eyes open for out of place rock formations
on the flats of the tidal rivers.
In the past, some of these I've searched have been ballast piles from abandoned ships.
Had my eyes on this one for a while,
but put off searching it.
I got a good deep signal, dug a copper bracelet, a rescan of the hole indicated more targets, as I went deeper I encountered dense blue clay mixed with straw.
And buttons.
Eventually I moved stones and excavated a hole 4' X 2' and about 36" deep.
I made the large excavation after finding several buttons to avoid any damage to the remaining ones, understand that this was blind digging in a pit of muddy water.
End result was 19 'New Hampshire Volunteer Militia' buttons, (Tice NH 200A3)
and 1 General Service high convex, resembles Tice GS 226, is missing its back.
My first 'Muffin'
All but 2 of the NH buttons have intact shanks, and I see no reason why the rest won't clean up as well as these, I picked a random button to start.
5 hours of aluminum jelly and toothpicks yield 2 clean buttons.
Thanks to Buckleboy for resto advise
I believe there are more items at this site, tides limit search time.
I will update this post with new finds, and more cleaned examples.
I'm including a NH Militia Officer photo.
Thanks for looking, and Great Digs to You all.

[PinFire]

WOW!! That's quite a haul! Congrats

[NaturalJWL]

Wow is right !!! Congrats

Pretty good clean up Will.

[kuger]

Now thats what I am talking about!!!Right on!

[gmanlight]

Some great stae buttons there. congrats

[MonkeyBoy]

Great story! Great finds!! Nice looking button once cleaned.

Banner!


MB

[crazyjarhead]

Wow, looks like you found the whole coat and some Nice jackpot

[wolcottdigger]

Nice buttons!
I love when people find buttons made in my home town of Waterbury Connecticut.

Joe

[Steve in PA]

That's a great discovery you made Herbie! I would love to find a New Hampshire state seal button. The other button is a Staff Officer's button.

[{Sentinel}]

Bravo SHW, an awesome score buddy! Congrats on all those New Hampshire Militias!! I've dug them at different sites in the past but never that many in one spot! Congratulations buddy and they will all clean up just as good. Aluminum Jelly works well, so does Greased Lightning and Lemon Juice. I've got all 3 in my repertoire!

[MaineRelic]

Wow that is great Herbie ! Great Great find ! Basically a whole jacket ! Have fun out there ! MaineRelic

[BobinSouthVA]

wow thats an awesome recovery. And great job cleaning them too.

congrats.

[metalev4]

Sounds like a really interesting site.

[billpa]

Wow, looks like you found the whole coat and some Nice jackpot

[VOL1266-X]

Herbie, you must have been hunting in "Button Cache" mode. Super finds Bud. You sure won't find many of those in Tennessee. HH, Quindy.

[Woodland Detectors]

I am still amazed! Herbie sent me photos of 8 he dug yesterday, I thought that was a home run, but when I got home tonight, I saw there was another email from him saying he found more!!!!

This is by far one of the best Banners in a while. What a Historic American score.

Herbie, send this to our friends please to get published.


North South Traders’ Civil War Magazine
Publisher’s Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 631
Orange, Virginia 22960
Email: publisher@nstcivilwar.com
Phone: 540-672-4845

[traverdog]

Lots of digging but lots of neat buttons found!!!

[HCW]

That's amazing. I'm trying to picture the site. Was this along a river edge or something. Can you take a shot of where you found these. This is definitely banner material. I never considered digging 36" deep for anything. I'm gonna have to rethink that.

[Iron Patch]

It comes in 3s... Make the next the best!

[Eric Willoughby]

Words can not even begin to describe the magnitude of this kind of find! I am thinking this was a ballast pile from a abandoned ship, and someone had left thier coat on board while the ship was being scuttled. The ship rotted away, leaving the jacket to sink and rot in the mud, leaving behind nothing but those beautiful buttons. Wow....just wow!