The First Michigan Cavalry was organized at Detroit and mustered into the United States service September 13, 1861, with an enrollment of 1,144 officers and men. The regiment left the state September 29, 1861, for Washington, D.C., and went into camp at Frederick, Md., where it remained several months. It was during this time that a young resident of Frederick, Richard Solon, enlisted and was mustered in as a Private in Co. H of the 1^st Michigan Cavalry. During his service with the regiment Solon was promoted to Bugler and would see some of the hardest Cavalry fighting of the war to include action with Custer’s Cavalry at Gettysburg. Solon was wounded by “gunshot” June 11 at Trivillion Station and listed as “missing, known wounded”, taken prisoner there and confined in Richmond until paroled on September 1, 1864. The freed Cavalryman was admitted to hospital on the 22^nd of September, 1864 and on January 7, 1865 the long suffering trooper was subjected to amputation of left leg at mid-thigh due to gangrene. He was discharged for disability on 1/5/1865 at Harpers Hospital, Detroit, Michigan. The Veteran Cavalry Bugler would continue to suffer the effects of his wound until June 12, 1898 when he would pass away at the Central Branch National Military Home. Bugler Richard Solon’s disc with identification as a member of Co. H., 1^st Michigan Cavalry was crowded with the names of engagements until it would hold no more and yet he apparently continued to carry it as it was unearthed (1988) near Cold Harbor where the regiment last camped before what would be Bugler Solon’s final engagement at Trivillion Station.

Condition: This excavated I.D. disc has gold in all the right places, with very little ground action. It is pictured in William C. Davis’s Book: Battlefields of the Civil War, page 101 (see photos below). At the time it was pictured, it was in the wonderful collection of Wendell Lang. We purchased this “best of kind” I.D. disc for close to $3,000 many years ago.

#E55 - Price $3,295, SALE PRICE: $2,695!