My First Decent Metal Detecting Finds

[Driftwood]

Hello all. Well, after getting used to the machine and learning to reliably find good items among billions of nails, I finally found a few sweet items. These are from an old abandoned church, built around 1800 near my home in the Schoharie Valley in NY.

This is a Civil War patriotic token... there are versions with various errors and this may be one of them, as it has no date... others are dated 1863. It says on the obverse: "THE FLAG OF OUR UNION" and on the reverse: "IF ANYONE ATTEMPTS TO TEAR IT DOWN SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT".

Next is Federal Navy button used around the time of our Civil War. The back was likely an iron shank and is rusted away, but the front is still in pretty nice shape. This was found close to the token and may be related... I'll look in the area again soon to see if there are any more CW relics.

The last two are buttons as well. The flat button on the left is plain on the front, but is in good shape. The other is hollow... the back has two holes on a raised portion for sewing, but there is also a hole from the front. Perhaps it had some kind of bobble or decoration in the front center.

Well, thanks for looking and we'll see if that site has more to offer... once the ground thaws a bit more.

[2ndoldman]

I would be happy with any one of those 4 finds. I really do like that Federal Navy button it is a fantastic find.
Your token may or may not be classified as a Hard Times token.
some of them had similar messages re the heroes and war. I don't know if you are a Facebook member but this site may be helpful. https://www.facebook.com/groups/IDME1/ I think the the "DIX" in the center stands for TEN so it might have a French background

[Driftwood]

Thanks! Yeah, I was pretty excited to finally get a few things out of the cold, hard ground! In doing research on the token, I found it was made in 1863 and 'DIX' was John A. Dix... Secretary of the Treasury and a General in the Civil War. The quote on the token was from him (although a bit changed from the original). What makes a token one of hard times? I'll have to look those up.

Info on Civil War tokens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_token
Info on John Adams Dix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_Dix

[Claycald]

Those are cool finds for sure!

[Driftwood]

Thanks! Metal detecting is turning out to be a great companion hobby to field hunting for stone artifacts... it helps to extend the goody-finding season.

[willjo]

Really nice finds

[CoachG]

Cool first finds.

[painshill]

Nice piece of history!

“Hard Times” has its roots in the period in the United States from 1829 onwards, when Andrew Jackson began undermining the position of the Second National Bank, which he saw as a threat to the country’s largely agriculture-based economy, dependent on institutional slavery in the South. In his words, banks were pitting “monied interests” against “farmers, mechanics and labourers”. This prompted what became known as the “Bank War” and state banks responded to the loss of backing from the National Bank by printing their own paper currency to fill the “money gap”, fuelling inflation.

In 1836, Jackson’s Secretary of Treasury (Levi Woodbury) attempted to halt financial speculation in public land assets by legislating that only gold and silver coins were to be used for payment relating to these transactions. Far from halting inflation, it had the opposite effect since it created the “Panic of 1837” and ordinary folk began hoarding coinage (not just silver and gold, but copper too) as they began to lose faith in a banking system reliant on paper money. Martin Van Buren inherited the problem when he came to office in 1837 and his presidency in particular became known as the “Hard Times”.

The shortage of low-value coins in circulation was crippling for tradesmen and small businesses, so they began issuing private tokens. The problem continued into the Civil War era, compounded by the general shortage of metals arising from resources being diverted to the war effort. The first Civil War tokens appeared in Cincinnati in 1862, then in New York the following year. Those with the name of a sponsor or issuer could be redeemed only for goods or services provided by the named concern but “patriotic” tokens with no issuer’s name circulated (mainly) across the Midwest and eastern states and were redeemable for cash.

As you say, “Dix” has nothing to do with France and is not an indication of value as “ten”, although it’s an oft-repeated myth. As Secretary of the Treasury at the time, John Adams Dix was popularly regarded as having “created” the shortage of coinage, so the use of his name and his (misquoted) patriotism was intended as political satire. The tokens generally carry no indication of value since they are almost all “one cent”, with smaller numbers of two cent issues distinguished by larger size.

There are more than 10,000 varieties and spelling or grammatical errors are not uncommon. There is a variant where “spot” is mis-spelled as “spoot” in Dix’s quote, for example.

Legislation was proposed in 1862 to put an end to one and two cent tokens but not enacted until 1864, supplemented with further legislation that forbade all private coinage of any denomination.

[painshill]

The button on the left of the final picture is almost certainly British-made and likely from between about 1810 to the mid-1830’s when they were imported in large quantities. The designation “Rich Orange – Warranted” as a back-mark was a term used by British manufacturers, relating to the nature and quality of the gilding. It was also occasionally used in later times by American manufacturers. If the lettering had been “raised” rather than “impressed” it could have been earlier… back to around the 1790’s.

[painshill]

Haven't seen that exact design for a Federal Navy button before. As a rule of thumb, if the anchor being clutched by the eagle is upright (as opposed to laying horizontally or slightly tilted with the crown pointing up), it's an early button and usually predates the Civil War.... generally from 1830 onwards.

[Driftwood]

Thanks for your thorough (as always!) explanations of the token/s! The lettering on the 'RICH ORANGE' button is impressed and not raised. The Federal Navy button is depicted on several forums and auction sites that I came across as I did a bit of research... so I'm only assuming it's correct as a Civil War-era button (ca1860). Civil War artifacts are fairly rare this far north, with the majority likely being left-overs/losses from Veterans who had returned. Who knows, perhaps some articles had been donated to the church at some point or had been lost during a celebration of some sort. In these rural communities, the churches were used for just about every kind of event.