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Found a RARE Civil War button here in Kentucky!!

SeaIslandRelicBoy

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I found a small Confederate camp near where I live here in Kentucky. Lots of round balls, and a nice "Western Military Institute" button.
It has to be one of the rarer buttons that I have ever dug!
Here is the History of the Western Military Institute;The Western Military Institute was a preparatory school and college located first in Kentucky, then in Tennessee. It was founded by Thornton Fitzhugh Johnson in 1847, and initially located in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Future Republican politician, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and Presidential Candidate James Blaine was an instructor there in 1850 and 1851. In 1851, future Confederate General Bushrod Johnson became a professor, and later served as headmaster until the beginning of the American Civil War.

In 1855, the Western Military Institute merged with the University of Nashville, and the campus was moved to that city. The combined school offered university and high school instruction to young men, the latter continuing to operate under the name Western Military Institute, though the controlling organization in the merger was the University of Nashville.

Sam Davis, "Boy Hero of the Confederacy", attended the Western Military Institute from 1860 to 1861.

The campus was located from 1855 to 1861 at 724 Second Avenue South, which serves today as Metropolitan Nashville City Government's Planning Building, home to the Nashville Planning Commission.

In 1867 the high school instruction of the University of Nashville, previously offered through the Western Military Institute was offered in the newly constituted Montgomery Bell Academy, which was housed in new facilities that are now the campus of the George Peabody College of Teachers at Vanderbilt University.
 

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Upvote 8
sweet looking button! congrats
 
awesome find! here's hoping you get more neat finds.
 
Plenty of gilt still on that button...a nice rare find! Thanks for the background about the school.
Nick
 
Great research and better button! Thank you for sharing the information you found! I'm reading North and South for the first time now and thought of that school while reading your post!
 
Excellent find! A rare button and a beauty at that!
Mike
 
wow that's a beauty. would look great in a small frame with with some mini balls
 
A very nice piece of history!
 

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