Veterans of the 1^st NY Dragoons held a series of annual reunions at Portage Bridge, NY, and issued ribbons for them bearing celluloid button portraits of various officers for them. This is an excellent example with the upper pin bar reading “souvenir” and the portrait button suspended by a red, white and blue ribbon. This is backed by an orange silk ribbon, the color being the appropriate service color for dragoons, bearing text in silver reading, “43^rd Annual Reunion 1t New York Dragoons Regt. Assn. / Portage Bridge, N.Y. Aug. 29, 1912.

Some digging in the regimental histories of the unit or accounts of the reunion might disclose the identity of the officer, who is shown in a vignette wartime bust view wearing a sack coat and what seem to be captain’s shoulder straps.

The regiment was a hard-fighting unit that lost 4 officers and 126 men killed or mortally wounded in the war. Civil War data includes 94 points at which they were engaged and suffered loss of some sort. We attach part of the summary of its service from “The Union Army:”

Col. William S. Fullerton, succeeded by Col. Alfred Gibbs, received authority to recruit a regiment of infantry--the 130th--in the counties of Allegany, Livingston  and Wyoming.  It was organized at Portage, and there mustered  in the service of the United States for three years, on the 2d  of September, 1862.  It was converted, July 28, 1863, into a regiment of cavalry, and August 11, 1863, designated the 19th  Regiment of Cavalry; this designation was changed September 10,  1863, to 1st Regiment of Dragoons. The regiment (ten companies) left the State September 6,  1862, and served at Suffolk, Va., from September 13, 1862; in  Terry's Brigade, Peck's, later Corcoran's, Division, 7th Corps,  from March, 1863; in 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 7th Corps, from  June, 1863; in the Army of the Potomac, from July, 1863; in the  Reserve Brigade, 1st Division, Cavalry, Army of Potomac, from  August, 1863; in the 2d Brigade, 1st Division, Cavalry Corps,  Army of Potomac, from September, 1864; with the Army of the  Shenandoah, from October, 1864; and with the Army of the  Potomac, from March, 1865. It was mustered out and honorably discharged, commanded by  Col. Thomas J. Thorp, June 30, 1865, at Cloud's Mills, Va.

This is a very colorful ribbon is superb condition from an active regiment.  [sr]

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