On June 17, 1777, Congress ordered payment to Col. David Mason of the 15th Virginia Regiment for “a pair of button moulds, which he procured for the use of the said regiment.” The amount allowed was $16.60. In 1818, veteran John Sampson swore to an Ohio court that “he enlisted near Winchester Virginia in spring of seventy six” in Capt. Thomas Berry’s company of the “eighth regiment Virginia line as numbered on our buttons.”


There is no doubt, then, that soldiers of the Virginia Line wore jackets with numbered buttons as soon as they began transitioning out of the hunting shirts they were issued as uniforms in 1775 and 1776. Yet museums, archaeologists, and hobbyists with metal detectors have yet to find a single example.


Buttons from the 3rd company of Maryland Mattrosses, the 8th Massachusetts Regiment, the New York Line, the North Carolina Line, the 3rd North Carolina Regiment, the 2nd Pennsylvania Battalion, the Rhode Island Regiment, the 2nd South Carolina Regiment, and two varieties of general service Continental Army buttons. To date, no Virginia buttons have been found.


Numbered buttons were adopted early in the war. As he worked to transform the 1775 rabble outside Boston into a regular army, George Washington ordered, “The Colonels upon the new Establishment to settle, as soon as possible, with the Qr Mr General, the Uniform of their respective regiments; that the buttons may be properly number’d, and the work finished without delay.” 


Buttons with Virginia-specific designs were probably not new. The 1st and 2nd Virginia Provincial regiments of the French & Indian War probably had them. A button found at the Calvert House in Maryland several decades ago bears a shield containing what a researcher has called “the arms of the Virginia colony, with a crown on top.” Its design closely resembles the 1773 Virginia halfpenny, and one researcher has suggested that it may have been used by colonial troops in the early 1770s. The researcher notes, “This shield and crown motif is virtually identical to that on the obverse of the 1773 Virginia halfpenny” and suggests, “This button may have been used by colonial Virginia troops during the early 1770s.” 


While conceding that “Much of the detail is indistinct,” the researcher is wrong about at least one thing. The arms on the 1773 halfpenny are not those of Virginia. They are the arms of the first three Hanoverian kings, which remained unchanged from 1714 to 1801. It would not be uncommon for a coin to be refashioned into a button, but we are told that “the back has a mold seam mark.” Virginia had no provincial troops between 1758 and 1775, and custom buttons for militia are unlikely. Could this item be a French & Indian War button? Perhaps more likely, a unit of county “independent” troops (volunteers) may have had them made in 1774 or 1775. Either scenario would date the button to before 1776, when use of the king’s arms was still appropriate. Buttons with the post-independence “Sic Semper Tyrannis” seal exist in great numbers, but are evidently all post-Revolutionary.



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The 1773 Virginia halfpenny was minted at the Tower of London.

Uniform buttons from other states survive, including from the Old Dominion’s neighbors. Several examples of a North Carolina Line button have been found, cast in pewter, sporting an intertwined “USA” with an “N” above and a “C” below. A Maryland artillery button with “MM” on one line and “3” below has been identified as coming from the coat of a soldier in the 3rd company of Maryland Matrosses. Examples from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and South Carolina have been found as well.


Why not Virginia? It seems odd that the largest colony, which fielded 15 Continental regiments of foot and more into the artillery and State line, has come up short on buttons. The likely answer is happenstance. Examples of all state-specific buttons are rare, and most have been dug from the ground. While the 8th and 15th Virginia regiments can be shown to have had numbered buttons, other regiments may have relied on the more plentiful general-service “USA” buttons that are found in many places. It is also not impossible that one has been found but misidentified.


Somewhere in the eighteenth-century landscape, Virginia buttons may still lie beneath the soil. If one surfaces, it might not be instantly identifiable given the lack of comparators. If one could be identified by design, dimensions, construction, or archaeological context, it would provide the first securely documented example of a Virginia Continental button.


​GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.