Monday, June 17, 2013

Do you have some old family buttons?

Buttons
I have not previously mentioned that buttons can sometimes be a clue to your ancestor's past - if you are lucky enough to have a family trinket box which contains some old embossed metal buttons. If your ancestor wore a uniform the buttons often identified who he worked for. So were they in the army, the police, the fire service - or did they work in one of the big houses where the button might represent some part of their employer's coat of arms.

The button shown in miniature here, and others on the Button page on the main web site, are metal detector finds from somewhere in Hertfordshire which, with one exception, have not yet been identified - but the one with the word "Volunteers" almost certainly has a military connection. Can you help by identifying them and do the have genuine Hertfordshire connections? Do you have some buttons with Hertfordshire links (especially livery buttons that can be lined to one of the big houses in the county) which I could use as illustrations on the Button page?

Karen Foy has published a book, Ancestors in the Attic - Making Family Memorabilia into History, The History Press, 2012, ISBN 978 0 7524 6428 2, which is reviewed in Genealogists' Magazine, June 2013.

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