All About Antiques: The stories told by dog tags

The use of dog tags by the military

did not come into major use until well after the Civil War. Back then, the

families of the killed did not receive a telegram or knock at the door by

military officials. Both sides struggled to come up with a way to let the loved

ones back home know that if they were killed, they would some how be identified

so the family could have closure.

These little known “survivors” of the Civil War are actually

quite rare and valuable. In May of 1862, Secretary of War Stanton suggested

that the Union soldiers be issued identification tags but the appeal was

denied. A group known as the U. S. Christian Commission issued 40,000

identifications tags that were just small pieces of paper with a grommet for

attaching to clothing or any other personal item to record the soldier’s

personal and military information. Of course, these paper tags did not hold up

well in battle situations or ordinary wear and tear.

Many soldiers fashioned their own ID tags from metal coins,

wood, and other bits of scrap. Some only had pieces of paper that they jotted

their information on and put in their pockets. Some soldiers that lay on the

field dying would pull out their family photos to clutch in their hands so that

by chance if they were found dead, that someone could identify them through the

photos.

One of the more interesting identification medallions were

made from a “sea heart” which was the hard seedpod of the entada gigas vine. It

was mostly round with an almost a heart shape that was very plentiful in the

Gulf Coast region and soldiers would carve their info into the seedpods!

 Some manufacturers picked up on this need and advertised

medallions that the soldiers could order for themselves and were advertised in

magazines of the day like Leslie’s or Harper’s. Some were expensive gold, while

others were cheaper brass or steel. These collectible relics were most often

brought home by survivors as the others were in the graves of the dead.

The identifiers also were sometimes taken off of the dead on

the battlefields as souvenirs for the victors. One such example is the fact

that a Union ID tag was found in the remains of the H.L. Hunley, a well-known

Confederate submarine. The name on the tag was of a Union soldier named Ezra

Chamberlain. Some have speculated that he was a prisoner or spy but more than

likely one of the other submariners just had a souvenir in his pocket.

Finally, in 1899 Chaplain Pierce of the Army was able to

convince the government to issue aluminum ID tags to all soldiers for use in

the Spanish-American War, a good 51 years after Stanton’s first call for some

kind of identifier!

These Civil War era ID tags are small works of art and very

interesting, each telling its own story. To learn more, go to your local

library or favorite internet search engine.

Happy collecting!

Jillinda Falen has been buying and selling antiques for

over 27 years. She is an estate liquidation specialist and licensed

REALTOR.  Contact her through the

Houston Home Journal or  at

falen@windstream.net

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