Purchased this piece as part of a collection and thought I would share it with you all as I found it interesting... During the Civil War the government did not issue soldiers with any kind of formal identification. Since death in a faraway county/state was a constant worry of the young gentleman volunteering to serve, they would often acquire identification tags from a number of private companies that produced them for this purpose. The tags would have on the obverse some type of crest and or legend referening the Union and the War of 1861 and the reverse they would be stamped or engraved with the soldier's name, company, and possibly later the battles they participated in. Today, these tags are quite rare. I happened to be able to acquire one from a young gentleman who volunteered in Livingston, NY at 18 years of age. Unfortunately, just a couple of years later he was killed by the accidental discharge of a pistol. Check out the links below to see photos of the piece... http://www.cdcda.org/1861-civil-war-obv.jpg http://www.cdcda.org/1861-civil-war-rev.jpg
Very nice piece cdcda! I only have one CW dogtag myself, but it never occured to me to track down the owner to see how he fared. Quite interesting!
I buy old war letters and war diaries. Dog tags are great, but my interest in them is secondary, only if they come with the soldiers diary. The diaries I buy are WWI and WWII. I dont have the income for Civil War diaries. I barely can afford to buy individual Civil War letters, but I have some of those. I have a handwritten Civil War letter written by Samuel Wolcott. The significance there is his brother Eben's letters are in the archives of Virginia Tech. Among my WWI stuff is the handwritten WWI diary of Alexander Edouart Farciot. Farciot won two Oscar awards for cinematography.
