
YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA—Finney Lynch was attending The Watermen’s Museum Archaeology Camp when she spotted a button on the ground and picked it up. She handed it over to her camp leader, Jason Lunze, who knew it was an eighteenth-century uniform button. A little research revealed that the rare button came from the collar or sleeve of a uniform worn by the 85th Saintonge Regiment Infantrie, a French unit based in the West Indies. The unit traveled to Rhode Island and then marched to Yorktown to assist George Washington in the 1781 Siege of Yorktown. After the button has been conserved, Lynch will be given a resin cast of it for a keepsake. “I think I’m going to put it somewhere really safe and special so I can have it for, like, ever,” she said.