First Light Dragoons Marksman Medals, ca. 1870
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GUEST:
I brought in a picture of my great-grandfather, Michael Doane, and he was with the Light Dragoons of San Francisco. And they were a militia in San Francisco between 1852 and, I think, 1888. And these are a couple of his sharpshooter medals.
APPRAISER:
Well, they're wonderful. And when you came up to the table, the three of us got really excited about them, as you noticed, yeah.
GUEST:
I noticed that.
APPRAISER:
We've got the picture of him in his militia uniform here.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
But the really interesting parts are the two medals.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So we have the shield. Now, the shield was presented once a year, but it was presented if, if he didn't win the next year, he didn't get it, it went to somebody else.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
So if we look at the back, we have "1867," was when he first won it.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
We have "1869," somebody else ended up with the medal.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Then we have here "1868," "1870," and then he got it back again in 1872. This shield is 18-karat gold.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
We went to our friends, our colleagues at the jewelry table, and we had them test it. The eagle is not. That's been applied, but it's, it's plated. It's got this wonderful "First Dragoons" here, and then "First Prize," with the crossed sabers and the pistols.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
This medal over here is presented for his 1867 win, which is listed on the back of this medal. This is 14-karat gold, and this is gold-plated. We have, "Best Battalion Shot, First Regiment Cavalry, September 9, 1867," which is the first year that he won, according to this medal.
GUEST:
That.
APPRAISER:
Take it off and flip around. Then we have here "From Colonel C.L. Taylor," to your ancestor, "First Light Dragoons."
GUEST:
They were a small militia, though.
APPRAISER:
They were a small militia unit, but they were wealthy. There are all these presentations that are done in that unit.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
If we had some more time, and you might be able to do this, you might be able to find newspaper articles, doing newspaper searches from this unit.
GUEST:
On that, okay.
APPRAISER:
There seem to be a lot of those listed in the San Francisco papers. They gave out, for marksmen awards, a variety of different things in militia units all over the country. But... You don't necessarily see a lot of gold medals done this well, also.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
I mean, these are very well done. These are nicely made. Given the fact that the First Dragoons, First Light Dragoons, is a pretty popular unit-- they had a lot of men who fought in the Civil War.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And a lot of men died during the Civil War. These are just postwar, and the fact that they're gold, we would put a conservative auction estimate at about $2,000 to $3,000.
GUEST:
That's a good one.
APPRAISER:
It's a good one. It's a great one.
GUEST:
Yeah, yeah.
APPRAISER:
And they're wonderful medals. The inscriptions are wonderful.
GUEST:
Thank you.
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