Pap.no. 17 f" EXCAVATIONS AT FORT LOOKOUT II — ^MILLER 73 



control was put into force among pewter button manufacturers in 

 this country. Some of the early pewter buttons were marked "Hard 

 "\'Vliite" or "Imitation Steel" to indicate quality, but tliis did not neces- 

 sarily denote their hardness, for even the hardest pewter was a soft 

 metal which was cheap and easy to melt and cast. Buttons of this 

 material have been cast at home from discarded pewter vessels which 

 were no longer serviceable as such. A number of homes had their 

 own button molds in which they made their buttons. These molds 

 were lent around to other families so that professional button manu- 

 facturers did not wholly control the markets. 



At one time during the late IGth and early I7th centuries, buttons 

 were willed to members of the deceased's family. Such items were 

 fully described as to use and material from which they were made. 



PINS 



Two brass straight or ordinary domestic pins were found. One 

 was on the floor of the uppermost historic level while the other was 

 in the earth fill of a j)it beneath the floor of that level. Both are cov- 

 ered with verdigris along with tiny particles of soil adhering to the 

 surface. One is complete and its overall length is 31 nmi. ; 1.5 mm. 

 of this is taken up by the head which tapers away from the shaft and 

 is topped with a slightly curved cap. Pins of this type were molded 

 all in one piece. The other pin has lost its head and the remaining 

 shaft measures 29.5 mm, in length. Both pins measure 1 mm. in 

 diameter. 



During the Middle Ages the ordinary domestic pin, which has long been an 

 article of feminine economy, was made of brass. In the fifteenth century it 

 had become of so much importance as an article of commerce in England that 

 in 1483 the importation of pins was forbidden by statute. Only the best pins 

 were made of brass, for there were inferior ones made of iron wire blanched, 

 and it was against these that the enactment was directed. By 1636 the Pin- 

 makers of London formed a corporation, and the manufacture was subsequently 

 removed to Bristol and Birmingham, the latter town becoming the principal 

 centre for the industry. Brass works or foundries had been started in Bristol 

 in 1702, and by a man named Turner, in Birmingham, about 1740. 



The earliest settlers in America were dependent on London for their pins 

 and needles, and there are few lists sent over by them which did not include 

 an order for one or the other of these articles. They were not sold as now, 

 by the paper, but by the hundred. 



So necessary were pins that is was not long before the colonists appreciated 

 the benefit to accrue to them by their manufacture, and the people of the Caro- 

 linas were stimulated by the offers of prizes for the first-made pins and needles. 

 This was by 1775. At a later day than this several pin-making machines were 

 invented in the United States, and during the war of 1812 the price of pins 

 rose to such an extent that the manufacture was actually started, but it was 

 not particularly successful until 1836. By 1824, however, Mr. Lemuel Wright, 

 of Massachusetts, had patented a pin-making machine in England, which estab- 

 lished the industry on its present basis. [Moore, 1933, pp. 121-123.] 



