mec1945
Your 2nd page asks for info on the button to the officer tunic. I'm not an expert on every detail of the uniforms but I know that the officer unifoms were issued with buttons of the Branch of Service. At one time, I was attempting to buy an engineer's tunic that did not have the standard buttons with the American Eagle. However, I thought this one had the Corps of Engineer's castle emblem---but I'm not positive.
I don't think I have any references that show the various buttons. The button might actually date the manufacture of the uniform----say pre-WW2 or post WW2.
I just searched eBay and found an item that has Engineer collar insignia and buttons for sale---no uniform. Here is how that Seller describes this button.
So, do you have other uniforms you plan to add to your virtual Museum?? Can I submit one of mine??
Steve
History of THE ENGINEER BUTTON: The Corps of Engineers' oldest and most time honored insignia is the exclusive Essayons Button. It has not been changed in the basic design since the war of 1812. It is still the required button for the Army Engineers' uniform. Evidence which could establish the actual facts concerning the designing and adoption of the Essayons Button probably burned at West Point in 1838, when the building containing the library and earliest official Corps of Military Academy records caught fire. However, while early Army regulations mentioned the "button of Engineers... with only the device and motto heretofore established", apparently no authoritative detailed description of the button appeared until 1840. The Army prescribed new uniforms on February 18, 1840, in General Orders 7, AGO, which officially described the button as follows: An eagle holding in his beak a scroll with the word, 'Essayons,' a bastion with embrasures in the distance, surrounded by water, and rising sun; the figures to be of dead gold upon a bright field." In 1902, when the Army adopted "regulation" buttons, it allowed only the Corps of Engineers to retain its own distinctive Essayons Button in recognition of the distinguished traditions that it symbolized.