Homemade Buttons at Fort Stanwix: How Soldiers Cut Replacements From Cow Bone

At Fort Stanwix in the 18th century, a button that fell off could not simply be replaced. The fort was the frontier: soldiers' reports speak of standing guard in freezing temperatures with inadequate clothing and bare feet, supplies were hard to come by, and any skill that could be used on-site was surely put to use. A few mundane objects, bone buttons, the cow rib they were cut from and the bit used to cut them, tell a story of inventive problem solving by the people stationed there.

A cut bone button, single drilled hole, concentric lines on back. National Park Service.

How a button was made

Plain bone buttons were utilitarian and secured undergarments. Treated bone disc buttons, which were covered, secured other clothing and served as "display" elements, such as buttons on a coat cuff. When a button was lost, its replacement often had to be made by hand. The process began with a flat piece of bone. A metal hand tool called a "bit" was pressed into the bone and rotated like a drill to cut out a disc. The new button was polished smooth and a brass loop was fitted into its center hole. Homemade buttons let anyone keep clothing fastened even when manufactured buttons were unavailable.

A metal tool called a "bit" was pressed, then turned, into a piece of bone or horn to carve out a circular disc. National Park Service.

A cut bone with two partial buttons in it. The three-prong button bit could be used to carve out a button. National Park Service.

Making buttons left "button blanks" behind: sections of cow long (leg) bones that look as if several bites had been taken out of the edge.

These distinctive pieces of bone, called "blanks," are the remnants of the button-making process. National Park Service.

A National Park Service archaeologist counts these buttons and their associated materials among the favorite artifacts in the collection because they show what people at the fort were doing. Button making does not usually cross anyone's mind, but the soldiers and civilians who lived there relied on their wits to supplement their material needs.

What the excavations found

Buttons were a common find in the 1970s archeological excavations, particularly in the barracks and casemate areas, and some could be dated by their markings to after 1775. A total of 558 buttons were recovered, and they were divided into types by method of manufacture and material; another 55 specimens were too fragmentary to classify. The buttons fall into two size ranges, 11 to 20 mm and 18 to 25 mm in diameter, which overlap because some types run larger than others. So many specimens fall within these ranges that the page says it can be stated with confidence that only two sizes served the soldiers: the smaller probably went on waistcoats and stood in for knee buckles, the larger on regimental coats and the waist band of pants. Besides bone, buttons of horn, brass and other metals turned up at the site.

Metal "USA" buttons like the top one here were the most common military buttons of the Continental Army and have been found at nearly every Revolutionary War site. Buttons like the artillery one and the horse-and-rider one could further distinguish the regiments and jobs of the wearer. National Park Service.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Stanwix National Monument, Bone Buttons & Manufacturing Tool, part of the series Curious Collections of Fort Stanwix, The Oneida Carry Era, which lists Lee M. Hanson's Casemates and Cannonballs (National Park Service, 1975) among its sources; rewritten in hubnx's own words.