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This all original excavated silver identification badge is offered here as recovered at Deep Bottom, Virginia and as photographed and illustrated in Wm. C. Davis’s best selling publication Battlefields of the Civil War. As our illustrations should do best to describe the physical characteristics of the silver badge, we will focus here on the service history of the 183rd Pennsylvania Infantry troop who wore it until he was wounded and lost his badge at Deep Bottom. John S. Clark mustered in on November 12, 1863 as a Private in Co. C, of the 183rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. The Regiment was in it’s infancy with official organizational efforts only about to commence. Though his health never seemed to be good and with frequent bouts of hospitalization for maladies to include typhoid fever and gonorrhea, Clark remained with the 183rd P. V. I. until he mustering out with the Regiment on July 13, 1865. During Pvt. Clark’s term of service the 183rd PVI saw action in campaigns from the Rapidan to the James River The hard fought 183rd P.V.I. saw action at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Po River, Spotsylvania Court House, Assault on the Salient, North Anna River, Totopotomoy, Cold Harbor and Petersburg. Clark’s regiment was present at the Siege of Petersburg and participated in action at Jerusalem Plank Road, Weldon Railroad and at Deep Bottom where per records now in the National Archives, Pvt. Clark was wounded. It was here at Deep Bottom sometime before the wounded soldier was moved North to be hospitalized that Clark’s silver identification badge separated from the breast of his Army blue coat and would lay where it fell until being recovered in 1983 by veteran digger Civil War historian, John Duggan of Virginia. (A collection file folder has been maintained with the piece and will come with it.) The history of the exact circumstances of the Clark’s loss of the little silver shield will, at this point, have to be left to supposition though further research could shed more light on the likelihood, based on the condition of the badge, that it came free from Clark’s breast when struck and wounded to the degree that he wound not return to his Regiment until March or April 1865. (Records indicate that he was a patient at the 1st Division Field Hospital, Virginia.) The particulars of Clark’s wounds suffered at Deep Bottom are key to completion of the story of the inscribed silver shield that would fall at Deep Bottom, Virginia where it would lie for decades before discovery and ultimately being featured in Wm. C. Davis’s – BATTLEFIELDS of the CIVIL WAR . As with all direct sales, we are pleased to offer a no questions asked three day inspection with refund of the purchase price upon return as purchased!
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