Many thanks for your response and I am sorry that you were unable to find
the link.
However, my researcher has carried out much work in attempting to source a
manufacturer of the buttons in the UK. Eventually, after many false starts his
search led him to the company FIRMIN, originally of London and subsequently of
Birmingham. The company were extremely helpful. They confirmed, as in your
response, that many military buttons were indeed made in Birmingham for many
overseas factor agents. Firmin eventually took over the majority of the
metal button producers in the UK.
Photographs of the buttons, and detail of the inscriptions were sent
to the company but they were unable to identify the source of manufacture. All
they could reliably say was that they were not produced by themselves, or by any
of the companies they took over.
You may of course be quite correct in that they were produced by a company
in Birmingham which Firmin did not consume. We may never know.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 4:22
PM
Subject: Rifleman's Tunic Buttons?
I
have failed to find a link to the picture of the button. However:
Hudson's Bay Company was a trading company, not a manufacturing
company. It may possibly have commissioned the production of goods
suitable for its market. I believe its records survive but are in
Canada. Nevertheless, they are likely merely to show that buttons were
obtained from a London merchant, whether acting as principal or as a factor
for a manufacturer elsewhere.
In
this period, the American economy was comparatively unsophisticated, though
manufactures were developing in the northern states, but are most unlikely to
have exported manufactured products to England. I think there is a much
simpler explanation, that the button was made in Birmingham.
Buttons are an element of the Birmingham 'toy' trade, which made a wide
variety of metal goods for ornament and adornment. If there are
similarities between a Combe Martin button and American Civil War buttons (or
even buttons supplied by the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada), it is likely to
be because they were all made in Birmingham.
Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley,
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
01562-720368
Alan, Bart & Bly,
Take a look at the archaeological report:
Trevor
