The answer to your question depends on whether or not you are willing to spend money on reference-books about Historical buttons.
Here are the three best button-books, with their authors and price:
"Record of American Uniform And Historical Buttons - Bicentennial Edition" by Alphaeus H. Albert. Shows Military, "Organization", School, and Political Campaign buttons from 1776 to 1976. List Price: $45
"Uniform Buttons Of The United States - 1776-1865" by Warren K. Tice. Published 20 years after the Albert book, contains many specimens not shown in Albert, and has much more Backmark info,
but stops after 1865, and doesn't have the Political Campaign and "Organization" (Red Cross, Coastal Survey, Veterans, etc) buttons. List Price: $59.95
"American Military Button Makers And Dealers; Their Backmarks & Dates" by William F. mcGuinn and Bruce S. Bazelon. Contains very detailed "dating" info for thousands of backmarks, and photos of the main button-making companies' backmarks (because their backmarks have variations over time which affect the button's date). List price $29.95
If you are just wanting for free info on the internet, Harry Ridgeways online Civil War Relic Archive's section on button-backmarks and Military buttons is where you should go. However, the Ridgeway archive does not show every variation. (In fairness, it would be unreasonable to expect Mr. Ridgeway to try to do
that much work.) Be sure to scroll down to the very bottom of the homepage for the Backmarks info. It is extensive, but again it does not have everything that is in the button-books.
Ridgeway Civil War reference archive
Also, you can learn a
lot of information (some of which isn't in any book) by searching back through the What-Is-It forum's
button-question posts here at TreasureNet. For example, none of the books listed above show Civilian-clothing buttons, such as "Fashion" buttons, "flower" buttons, "Dandy" buttons, and the civilian-clothing imitations of Military buttons.
