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Preserving History: Authentic Objects Across Eras
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Size: 4 x 2.25 inches
Most toy police badges on a five-and-dime rack said SPECIAL POLICE and nothing else. This one names a real place and gets its founding year right. BLAIR TOWNSHIP POLICE, with 18 on one side of the shield and 39 on the other: 1839, the year Blair Township was set off from Frankstown Township in what is now Blair County, Pennsylvania.
And the police force it names was young. Blair Township had no police department until 1966, when the township supervisors hired Maurice Chamberlain as a part-time chief along with a single part-time patrolman. So here is a tin-litho toy from a Japanese factory carrying a small Pennsylvania township's founding date and the name of a department that started with two part-time officers. It is still pinned to its original yellow SPECIAL POLICE BADGE card, marked JAPAN, and still in its clear sleeve. New Old Stock.
The badge is a round tin lithograph pinback. A red rim circles a yellow ground, and on that ground sits a blue shield edged in navy. BLAIR TOWNSHIP arches across the top in black capitals with POLICE beneath it. The date is split around the center, 18 at the left and 39 at the right, and the center of the shield is a left-facing profile of a Native American chief in a red feathered headdress with a cream headband.
The card carries no town name at all; the badge does all the local work. Across the top runs a red banner lettered SPECIAL POLICE BADGE in white. Below it rides a cartoon motorcycle patrolman in a white peaked cap, goggles, dark uniform and tie, gloved hands on the handlebars beside a big round headlamp, with a pale city skyline behind him. JAPAN is printed at the lower right corner of the card.
America has more than one Blair Township, and the date on the shield settles which one this is. Blair Township, Michigan, in Grand Traverse County, was not established until 1867, took its name from Michigan's Civil War governor Austin Blair, and is patrolled today by the county sheriff's office rather than a police department of its own. Blair Township, Pennsylvania, was set up in 1839 and has had its own police department since 1966. The 1839 on this badge is the Pennsylvania township's year.
The land was first settled in 1773, as part of Frankstown Township in what was then Huntingdon County. In 1839 the county court divided Frankstown and gave its western part the name Blair. The new township counted about 1,176 people. It had no towns of any size, only the small villages of Catfish, Vicksburg and Reservoir, sitting among the boroughs of Hollidaysburg, Gaysport and Newry and part of Duncansville.
Seven years later, on February 26, 1846, Blair County itself was formed out of Huntingdon and Bedford counties and given the same name. Today the township covers about 13.7 square miles in the southern part of the county, borders Hollidaysburg and Duncansville to the north, surrounds the borough of Newry, and takes in the communities of Fort Fetter, Penn Farms, Reservoir, Brooks Mill and Vicksburg. The 2020 census counted 4,785 residents.
John Blair (1766 to 1832), the man Blair County is named for, was born at Blair's Gap. His state historical marker remembers him as a pioneer farmer, merchant and public servant, an advocate of good roads and a promoter of the Pennsylvania Canal and the Allegheny Portage Railroad, the inclined-plane line that carried canal traffic over the Allegheny ridge. When the township was named in 1839, the order honored "John Blair, Esq., late a distinguished citizen of Huntingdon County."
Among the early settlers, Patrick Cassidy founded Newry, and Henry Campinou and Michael Fetter ran a gristmill near what is now Route 22. Then there are the lawmen. Maurice Chamberlain was the department's first chief, part-time, from 1966. In 1976 the township signed on with the Pennsylvania State Police for dispatching, a service known as Blair Base. In 1977 the supervisors made Chief Richard Clapper full-time and added a full-time patrolman, Denny White. The department that began with two part-time officers now runs five full-time officers and no part-timers.
Long before it was a township, this was Native ground. The township's own history names the Delawares, Muncies, Nanticokes, Shawnees and Tutelos among the peoples who lived, hunted and traveled through it, and local tradition tells of Indian signal fires burning on Chimney Rocks, flashing messages to warriors watching in the valley below. Just next door, the state's Frankstown historical marker records a Delaware and Shawnee village called Assunepachla on the Kittanning Path, where the trader Frank Stevens kept a fur post by 1734. Frankstown still carries his name.
Toy badges have a true story of their own. Sheriffs used tin toy badges like this as prizes in youth programs, handing them out to kids. That is where a dime-store toy crossed over into real community life.
No maker's name appears anywhere on the badge or card, only JAPAN. Tin lithography means printing a full-color image onto flat sheet tinplate and then stamping and forming the metal, so the picture becomes part of the surface. It is how one small button could carry a shield, a date, a portrait and two lines of lettering, and why the blue and red on this one are still bright. After the war, American occupation authorities ordered Japanese export goods marked "Occupied Japan" from February 1947; the occupation ended on April 25, 1952, and Japanese toy makers went on selling bright, inexpensive tin novelties to American variety stores.
A toy like this carried a real local name into a child's hands: a township's own name and founding year, on a badge naming a police force that had only existed since 1966. Town-named tin litho badges like this one seldom surface today, and they are a different object from the generic SPECIAL POLICE badges with no town at all: the town is what makes them local history.
New Old Stock. The badge is still pinned to its original card, and badge and card are still together in their clear sleeve.
No. It is a tin lithograph toy badge sold on a dime-store card. It carries a real township's name, but it was never police equipment.
Blair Township in Blair County, Pennsylvania. The 1839 on the shield is that township's founding year, and it has had its own police department since 1966. Blair Township, Michigan, dates from 1867.
The Blair Township police department it names was formed in 1966, which puts the badge in the 1960s-1970s. The 1839 is the township's founding year, not the badge's.
Japan, as printed on the card.
Color printing on flat sheet tinplate before the metal is stamped into shape. The image is part of the metal surface rather than a paper label.
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