If anyone has any information that could help in identifying the symbols on
a button found during a recent project, it would be appreciated.  I have a
photograph of the button and a sketch of the symbols and will be more than
happy to email them to you at your request.

During Phase II excavations at site 8ES2769 (Billingsley Tract) at Naval Air
Station Pensacola, Florida, a machine-stamped copper button (approx. 1.5 cm
in diameter) was recovered.  The manufacture technique dates this button
from the mid- to late-nineteenth century.  This button depicts an unusual
group of symbols on the face, which consists of a variety of elements such
as a two-story building that appears to be a church, a floating two-masted
boat, water ripples, a clump of grass and/or reeds, a snake, a stylized
fish, possibly two butterflies, stars, circles, two stylized torches, and
three chain links depicted horizontally.  Other geometric symbols depicted
near the edge of the button are not easily discernable.

The time periods represented at the site are mainly early
American/antebellum, Civil War, and reconstruction into the twentieth
century.  A portion of the site was once a part of the
mid-nineteenth-century Warrington Village, which was constructed around the
Navy Yard at Pensacola.  Most of the village was destroyed during the Civil
War and never rebuilt.  In 1906, a hurricane struck the area and any
structures left standing were completely razed after the storm destruction
was cleared away.  In the 1930s, two-story brick officer’s quarters were
constructed in this area and remain today.

Cyndi Sims
Panamerican Consultants, Inc.
Tampa, Florida
(813) 884-6351
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