Firemen's convention attendee's badge. I don't find a detailed history, but I think this would have been one of the organizations that evolved into the State Firemen's and Fire Marshals Association of Texas. The early volunteer firefighter organizations had regular state and regional conventions that were well-attended. I can almost guarantee that they had a panoramic group photo made of the attendees. One might well be found at the San Angelo fire Department or local historical society or any any number of small and large fire departments around the state. Pretty neat piece. These things don't often survive. I've seen plenty of the old group photos from various Texas fire conventions but haven't seen any badges that old. There might be a historian at the SFFMA who would know about that old organization. The conventions were big deals, as you can see by the effort that went into the badges. And the San Angelo Standard newspaper goes back to 188, and they might have archives with a story that might well mention the convention and maybe a list of who attended.
If you really like to research finds and you found this one associated with a home or business site with a known ownership history, you might find out who it belonged to. The owner would have been a member of his local volunteer fire department, and a great many departments have preserved membership rosters from way back. In those days, volunteer departments were commonly manned by the prominent men in the community. If you were a substantial citizen, you were expected to be in the department, so you find bank presidents, business owners, doctors and such on the rosters, often every able-bodied man of means in town. And those same departments often have the old convention photos. It will be a big group of men in black suits, but the resolution is often quite good, and I've used one of them as a source of a photograph of a former fire chief when no other photo could be found. He was outcast on account of leaving his wife and running off with another woman, after which the firemen tried to obliterate all record of him. One day, we had a group of real old timers in the office looking at a convention photo. They were pointing out men they had known who were still around when they started, and they pointed at one man and started cussing him, "And there's that s*o*b* X." And we had our missing chief's photo, which completed our set of all the historical chiefs and annoyed the old timers. Many of the old fire department meeting minutes books are still in existence, and they will probably mention who went to the convention in 1917.
It's a fireman's convention badge/souvenir. You can see the top where the loop has been broken off. It may have looked similar to this one from 1893 or it may have been suspended from a ribbon.....
