THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BUTTOn
After years of searching colonial properties and digging tens of thousands of holes, three little letters in the dirt were about to reveal one of the greatest finds of my metal detecting career.
L to R - Matt, Rich, Jason, and Doug with the prized button
There are certain things in metal detecting that you know are possible to find, but after enough years go by without finding one, you start wondering if your day will ever actually come. For me, a George Washington inaugural button was one of those finds. And when I finally found one, I almost called it a wheat penny before I even dug the hole.
The Field
We were detecting a massive cut soybean field in southern New Jersey. At one time there had been a 1700s farmhouse near the edge of the field, but the house itself had been gone for well over a century.
About to start metal detecting this freshly cut soybean field
When I say this field was massive, I’m talking probably 100 acres or more. Even with six of us swinging metal detectors, there was absolutely no way we were going to cover it in one day.
So we kept going back.
On our first trip, we concentrated around the location of the old farmhouse, and we did really well. Large cents, old buttons, 1800s silver coins, crotal bells and all kinds of other things started coming out of the ground.
Every time we returned, we pushed a little farther away from where the house once stood. By our fourth or fifth trip, we were probably 100 yards or so away from the old homesite.
And the finds were still there.
A 46 signal I’ll never forget
The day had already started strong with more old coins, buttons and silver when I got a really nice signal.
A 46 on my Nokta Legend.
It was crisp, repeatable and sounded about coin-sized. Doug was nearby, and I actually told him what I thought it was before I dug it. “I’m predicting another wheat cent” I yelled out to Doug, but on this hole I couldn’t have been much more wrong.
I cut a plug about six inches deep and spread the loose dirt across the surface. My pinpointer found the target pretty quickly, so I bent down, picked it up, and I immediately realized it wasn’t a coin at all.
It was a button, and a big one.
It looked like a large dandy-style button, except this thing had obviously been hit by a plow sometime during its life because it was completely folded in half.
Or, as we like to call it… Tacoed.
Let’s Investigate…
I started gently brushing some of the dirt away, hoping there might be some kind of design or lettering underneath. The problem was that half of the face was now folded over onto itself, so whatever was there wasn’t going to be easy to see.
Then I noticed something right along the edge.
Three faint letters peeking through the dirt...
ONG.
The first time I saw ONG on the button
That’s it, just ONG. And immediately my mind started racing.
Could It Actually Be?
What word ends in ONG? Then one possibility popped into my head.
LONG.
And there’s one very particular button that just about every colonial metal detectorist dreams about finding with that word on it. I called everybody over. At this point I didn’t know what I had, and I didn’t want to get too excited. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Could this possibly say…
LONG LIVE THE PRESIDENT?
Because if it did, this wasn’t just another old button.
This could be a George Washington inaugural button.
Long Live the President
Let’s step back a little in time….
On April 30, 1789, George Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City and was sworn in as the first President of the United States.
It was a huge moment for the new country. Crowds packed the streets to witness history, and after Washington took the oath, Chancellor Robert Livingston proclaimed, “Long live George Washington, President of the United States.”
Commemorative buttons were produced celebrating Washington and the new presidency. Different varieties featured Washington’s initials, eagles, the original states and other patriotic designs.
The words LONG LIVE THE PRESIDENT appeared on several of them. The Smithsonian identifies buttons bearing that phrase and Washington’s initials as being worn by supporters during his first inauguration.
Now more than 230 years later, I was standing in the middle of a soybean field wondering if I had just found one.
One Letter at a Time
We kept carefully brushing away the dirt.
Eventually another letter appeared before ONG.
L.
Now it definitely said LONG.
Okay… Now my heart was really going. A little more cleaning and then we started seeing:
LIVE.
At this point I think we all knew where this was going.
We continued gently removing the dirt until eventually enough of the remaining lettering became visible.
THE.
That was it.
I GOT ONE!
After all those years of detecting colonial properties and hoping that someday one of these would finally come out of the ground, it actually happened.
I had found an incredibly rare George Washington inaugural button!
And the whole crew lost it.
The “Plain Roman”
Even folded completely in half, enough of the design survived for us to identify the variety.
It was a George Washington “Plain Roman” inaugural button, with the simple GW right in the center surrounded by the words:
LONG LIVE THE PRESIDENT.
The specimen is known in the collectors’ world as the “GWI-8 Plain Roman” and is one of the more elusive varieties of Washington inaugural buttons. It’s believed that fewer than 40 examples still exist today, and similar George Washington inaugural buttons can be found in major museum collections, with exceptional examples selling well into the thousands of dollars.
But honestly, none of that mattered to me standing in that field.
With all the colonial properties we’d detected over the years, I always knew finding a GW button was possible. It was one of those bucket-list finds I hoped would eventually happen.
And today was finally that day.
From Tacoed to Treasured
The next day, I very carefully and very slowly worked on unfolding the button until I was able to get it relatively flat again. I may eventually have it professionally conserved or restored, but for now it sits in one of my most special display cases.
GWI-8 button after carefully reopening it.
I’ve dug literally tens of thousands of holes since I started metal detecting. Most contained things I’ve long since forgotten. Some contained incredible coins and relics that I’ll remember forever.
But very few have given me the feeling I had standing in the middle of that enormous empty soybean field, staring at three faint little dirt covered letters:
ONG.
Those three letters were all it took to make me wonder.
And finally the following day after it was flattened out as it was intended to be seen, those two most important letters in the center that confirmed one of the finds I’d dreamed about making for years:
GW.
Sometimes you know exactly what you’ve found the second it comes out of the ground.
And other times a find makes you earn it, one letter at a time.
My dug George Washington button on the left - Undug GW button specimen on the right
WATCH THE HUNT
Watch the full hunt below, or jump to 19:36 to see the George Washington button come out of the ground.
