Can anyone help with the two items of material culture below?  Both are
brass. The first object is unidentifiable to me and comes from the surface
of the site. Perhaps part of a fob seal or watch fob?. The second is
obviously a plain, brass button with soldered, eye-loop shank and comes from
feature 2 (plow-disturbed) part of the structure rubble and debris
containing other known War of 1812 buttons and artifacts. The profile of the
button is convex (obverse)/concave (reverse). I don't recognize the button
type. The historical literature of the War of 1812 for the area mentions
resupply of "bullet buttons" for military uniforms, mostly militia. Are
there any publications that discuss bullet buttons from excavated War of
1812 sites, or museum collections of military dress of the period?

 

Both artifacts come from an archaeological site that was test excavated some
years ago below Fort Meigs State Memorial Park (War of 1812) and slightly
west (upriver) on the floodplain terrace of the Maumee River. The site was a
log house (domestic residence) part of a farm inhabited from 1810 to ca.
1830 by Amos Spafford and family, the second U.S. Port Collector for the
District of Miami at the Foot of the Rapids.  The log house was destroyed by
burning when the American village of Port Miami was destroyed on August 20,
1812 by a British and Indian party from Fort Malden (Canada) commanded by
Captain Peter Latouche Chambers and the Shawnee Tecumseh.  Spafford and
family returned in the spring of 1814 to the site to rebuild their house and
farm. The site was abandoned about 1830 when Aurora and Mary Spafford, son
and daughter-in-law of Amos and Olive Spafford, moved to the blufftop above
into a wood-frame house they built.  The log house on the river terrace
below was occupied by an unknown squatter family beginning in the mid-1830s.

 

The log house represents a pre- and post-War of 1812 site of back-to-back
occupations separated by a temporal period of twenty months.

 

1. Unidentifed brass object:

 

http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view
<http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view&current=33W
o50UnidentifiedBrassNo200FrontViewSurface.jpg>
&current=33Wo50UnidentifiedBrassNo200FrontViewSurface.jpg

 

http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view
<http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view&current=33W
o50UnidentifiedBrassNo200BottomtViewSurface.jpg>
&current=33Wo50UnidentifiedBrassNo200BottomtViewSurface.jpg

 

2. Brass button

 

http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view
<http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view&current=33W
o50Feature2Button10Obverse.jpg> &current=33Wo50Feature2Button10Obverse.jpg

 

http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view
<http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r230/Pat_Tucker/?action=view&current=33W
o50Feature2Button10Reverse.jpg> &current=33Wo50Feature2Button10Reverse.jpg

 

Regards,

 

Pat Tucker

Swanton, Ohio, USA