Charmstring Stereoview

A Charming Imagination

When searching for stories about charm strings, I came across this intriguing stereoscopic view of a string of 3,500 buttons.  This picture, published by W. McLeish of Syracuse, New York, represents “a collection… gathered by Miss Emma J. Brown, of Truxton, N.Y.” during a two and a half year period.  The description states that Emma was an orphan and invalid, had been sick for four years and unable to walk for two years.  I thought it would be fun to try to find out more about Emma J. Brown.  Could she be the young girl pictured in bed with strings of buttons draped around her that was featured in a previous Button Brief article?

I decided to use the Ancestry.com family tree research program to try to find Emma.  Stereoviews and charm strings were both popular from 1850 to 1900, so I searched in that time frame.  I also looked for a single young woman who was orphaned and lived in the New York area.   I thought that this would be enough information to find Emma, but this became a task that was more speculative than factual.  When looking at the census should I look for an Emma J.  Brown living in the household of someone of another last name such as an aunt or grandparent, or had she been a servant in someone’s home before becoming ill.  Maybe she was listed as a boarder, or perhaps she was actually living in an orphanage or a hospital.  If she had been a servant then that would not be the girl in our previous photo.  If she was orphaned maybe someone sponsored her button charm string as a way to pay for her medical care.  Obviously I became lost among a sea of Emmas and was unable to identify the owner of this charm string, but it certainly was fun to imagine her story.

This button history search dead-ended, but we can help keep the history of our personal collections alive through documentation of their provenance.  Whether you acquire one special button or a group of them I encourage you to keep the personal string of stories intact.  Button collecting is certainly fun, but it is also a means of preserving pieces of history.  These details may not seem as important as simply enjoying each beautiful button, but when brought together they can add to our hobby by building a robust historical archive.  Don’t leave the story of your favorite buttons to the imagination…write it down now!

This article is reproduced from the California State Button Society Button Brief .