Pat,

Thank you for the accolade ... they are always appreciated :)  I had a few 
minutes of leisure on a placid Sunday morning to burn whilst having coffee, 
and I had an interest in buttons (and too, I already had the advantage of an 
earlier interest in, and acquaintence with, the Wallis/Wallace family, 
having dated a 5x-great-grand-daughter for a while ... decades ago). 
However, I must take the opportunity to (once again) credit the fantastic 
new resource that is Google Books.

This project, steadily scanning the troves of ancient tomes in faraway 
libraries ... some of whose covers have not been opened in a century ... is 
like having online access to a resource that I imagine tantamount to a 
modern-day Library of Alexander. Google is spending billions to scan 
millions of rare and obscure publications and put them online for instant 
(and searchable) access. Many of the older, rarer volumes (out of copyright) 
are available in full-text, from cover-to-cover ... and you can download a 
keeper copy (in PDF) for FREE. Any historian or historical archaeologist who 
has not learned to use this fantastic resource is doing herself/himself a 
great disservice and deprivation.

http://books.google.com/bkshp?tab=wp

~Bob

full disclosure: i was invested in Google's IPO, but to my shame, i sold-out 
and allowed my Roth account to take a huge gain BEFORE the truly meteoric 
rise in stock price; i now have no monetary interest in Google beyond the 
nostalgic reminiscence that the company appears to be spending the billions 
they made on some fairly worthwhile projects of great utility to 
archaeologists (three of which I use almost every day ... Google Books, 
Google Earth, Google Patents).

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick Tucker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2007 8:45 AM
Subject: William Wallis Buttons


> Thanks to Bob Skiles for reply on information about William Wallis,
> Birmingham, England, button burnisher and distributor of brass buttons 
> with
> quality marks from ca. 1790-1840. You are amazing Bob.
>
>
>
> Pat Tucker
>
> French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan
>
> Detroit
>