What kind of flat button??

[musketman121]

Says very fine quality. Shank is covering what i think might be an eagle...tempted to try and bend it back but surely it would break. I found an 1819 large cent in the same area among other things. Trying to date this old farmhouse ive been hunting and see just how old it is. Thanks for any info on button!

 

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[musketman121]

 

[musketman121]

Nothing at all? Come on ppl

 

[HomeGuardDan]

It is a civilian button from the 1820s-1830s. I did not look up the backmark which will narrow it down - but the style is consistent with that date range. It is 100% civilian.

 

[musketman121]

What about it makes it consistent of that time? Thats great though. I have 3 others ive found there too that i would guess are the same period.

 

[musketman121]

Top right reads silver plate tops &edges, inside has initials i cant read. Top left reads b & burnham extra fine. The smaller bottom left i cant read and bottom right is the one pictured already

 

[fyrffytr1]

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to give you a detailed explanation but for the Reader's Digest version, the four buttons you have were made between the 1790s and the early 1840s.The B & Burnham backmark dates that button between 1834 and 1843. The B. stands for Benedict.

 

[musketman121]

Yea i did find some info on that one. So pretty much confirms what i was thinking. Thanks

 

[HomeGuardDan]

In looking at my books - all of those backmarks date from 1820s-1840's. They are all consistent with the type of backmarks from the period. Buttons typically did not begin using backmarks until post 1800 (though there are some that go into the 18th century). The marks with quality, best, treble, etc. all refer to the level of gilt applied to the buttons. Those are always post 1800 and typically 1820-1840s which is why I replied earlier by saying that date range without even looking at the exact backmark.

Dan

 

[musketman121]

Thanks Dan that is a good nugget of info to remember. Weird that it would only be up to 1840s and nothing post 1840s bit i guess they wore them for years and years....and theres still lots of ground to cover. Best spot ive found to hunt except that i was really expecting more civil war things. Its within 2 miles of probably 3 or more smaller battles and skirmishes...waiting for that hotspot its acres to cover

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Musketman121 wrote:
> Weird that it would only be up to 1840s and nothing post 1840s but I guess they wore them for years and years....

The reason that brass ONE-PIECE flatbuttons do not date after the 1840s is that the invention of button-making machinery which could INEXPENSIVELY mass-produce "fancy" 2-piece buttons made the plain old 1-piece buttons fall out of favor with the public. Kinda like what happened when color TVs became price-competitive with black-&-white ones.

That being said... you are quite correct that some "needy" people kept on using the old 1-piece buttons from the early-1800s, even into the civil war era. Clothing wears out and gets thrown away, but the brass 1-piece buttons didn't wear out... so low-income people would salvage the buttons and use them on new-made clothes, for decade after decade.

On that subject... we civil war relic diggers frequently find early-1800s brass 1-piece flatbuttons at Confederate camps way out in the woods, far from any house-site. When the Confederate supply-department was unable to provide the correct replacements for lost Military buttons, needy CS soldiers substituted whatever was available to them... including wood buttons, bone-buttons, civilian flower-buttons, and "obsolete" plain ol' flatbuttons.

 

[musketman121]

Thanks cannonball very helpful as well. I do know most confederates used anything and everything available. So this must have been the case being this was a southern farmhouse. The house has been vacant since maybe the 1980s. I suspect somewhere on the farm Ill start finding those three ringers and eagle buttons but so far no signs of union soldiers finding this one...its still hard to find the place today! They were all over the area surtounding for sure though