DOTD 2008-10-31 draft
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,530 ✭✭✭✭✭
DIGS O' THE DAY (2008-10-31): TRICK-OR-TREATING IN THE DIRT
I had "The Dream" the other night. It's a recurrent dream with me; nothing so noble as Martin Luther King's dream or The American Dream, but special enough to me that I have it once or twice a year. Many treasure hunters will be familiar with it, and perhaps some folks who have never been a treasure hunter will know "The Dream" well. To avoid boring you, I'll sum it up in a sentence: basically, I was out digging in the dirt (without a metal detector or any special equipment) and just combing my fingers through the loose soil, and pulling out all sorts of lovely old obsolete coins. The nice thing about having a metal detector is that one can make this dream come true, at least partially.
I knew today was destined to be a "dig day" when I stepped outside in the morning. It was too perfect to pass up the chance to get outdoors for a change. I'd only had one summer outing in August (which I still need to write up) and not surprisingly, it was way too hot then. Since the coming of cooler temperatures and lower humidity, I'd missed out on all sorts of lovely fall weather so far. The opportunity to go detecting had just not presented itself until today. I knew I had to go out and "put the coil to the soil" at least once before fall faded into winter, and in keeping with the words of Mel Fisher, one of history's greatest treasure hunters, my attitude was, "Today's the day".
I had an errand to run on St. Simons Island, so the first round of detecting took place there. There is what appears to be a new subdivision going in on the southern end of the island, and I saw "naked dirt" laid bare by bulldozers, which always catches my attention in certain areas. Especially when it's so close to historical areas, as this was. In fact, only seconds after stepping out of my vehicle, I spied the neck of an early-1900s medicine bottle peeking out of the loose dirt right next to where I'd parked. That's all it was- just a fragment- but it told me there was the potential of older finds here, even though all the surrounding buildings are much more modern.
The construction site was quiet, the heavy equipment idle, and there didn't seem to be anybody around. After I'd walked around a few minutes, I noticed a man in a landscaping truck who was about to drive away, and I asked him if he knew who the owner of the property was and whether it would be all right if I poked around a bit with the detector. He said the owner was out of town but probably wouldn't mind my detecting a little, especially if I could find the survey marker on the corner of the lot. I was happy to help. I looked for the survey marker but as it was in an area with lots of metallic trash and was nothing but a piece of steel rebar, I was unable to find it.
From the looks of the piles of gravel and the roads being put in, there wouldn't be much time to check out this site while the dirt was bare. It proved to be about as trashy as I had expected, with lots of pieces of wire and other bits of things you'd expect to find at a construction site. The junk was not so much from this most recent activity, but definitely modern and from the latter half of the 20th century. Still, there were colonial Spanish and English sites not too far away from here, so it was worth poking around to see what sorts of goodies the ground had in store for me.
While wandering the soon-to-be subdivision, I noticed a "tree spirit" carved in one of the live oaks. These carvings in the trees are a local tradition and lesser-known tourist attraction on St. Simons Island, but I could only recall seeing perhaps six or eight of them previously. To my surprise, I found a total of three here, all in this one area. Apparently these are newer carvings. My cousin was here from out of town recently, and mentioned that he was visiting a friend of his who does the "tree spirit" carvings. These obviously-newer three were probably his friend's handiwork. They are a nice art form, carved as they are into the mysterious, moss-strewn live oaks, and I guess they don't really harm the living trees. Live oak is a very hard wood, and must be very difficult to carve when it's "green" living wood like this. It's a hard enough wood that it was used to build the US Navy's first ships, and "Old Ironsides", the USS Constitution, did not in fact have iron sides, but rather timbers of Georgia live oak, cut right here on St. Simons Island.
The bottom of an old Coke bottle was lying exposed, so I picked it up. I could tell it was old, as it had the “Coca-Cola” script on the bottom, along with the number “31”. Perhaps that’s a date (1931)? I’ll have to research it further. Certainly what's left of the bottle looks like others I’ve seen from the 1920s and ‘30s. Not far away was a fragment of what might have been an old chamber pot. I wasn’t finding anything old with the detector, though. A modern quarter and cent turned up, but that was about all I got besides junk.
Finally another clear, coin-like signal on the detector proved to be a slightly older coin. It was a Wheat cent, and it came out of the sandy soil pristine and perfect, looking just like a non-dug one would. It was just a later-date common one, though: a 1957-D. This means there is probably silver hiding nearby, but this Wheatie was to be the only older coin I found on this site today.
I soon grew bored with the junk and decided to return to the mainland. As I was leaving, I noticed a little witch strolling down the sidewalk in a nearby residential area, accompanied by her mother. Ah, yes. It was time for the trick-or-treating to begin!
Back in Brunswick, on the mainland, I cruised my usual haunts: the parks and sidewalk areas of Old Town. I discovered one block where they’d taken up the very old brick sidewalk for repair. This is always a golden opportunity for a detectorist who wants to shoot in a “time capsule”, since many of the sidewalks here in Old Town are more than a century old, and the dirt beneath them has never touched a modern pulltab, aluminum can, or other bothersome piece of junk! I could feel my excitement rising. Coincidentally, this very stretch of sidewalk ran right in front of some yards I had detected previously, with good results.
Just as when they had replaced the ancient brick sidewalks in the nearby park, I found the area beneath this one to be surprisingly free of signals, except for a few rusty old square-headed nails. Obviously the layer that had been exposed was quite early. In fact, the pontiled bottom of an old black glass bottle told me that this sandy dirt might not have seen the light of day since the Civil War, or earlier!
Right in front of the house where my detecting partner Ty Herig used to live, I got a solid signal, and scratched around in the sandy soil.
My heart leapt as I recovered the target and saw it was round, and caked with the green verdigris of a relic that has lain buried for a very, very long time. At first I thought it was a coin. It was about the right size to be an old nickel. Perhaps it was an old Liberty Head or Shield nickel, from the late 1800s!
No, it was older than that, but not a coin. Actually, it was quite a bit older than anything I'd expected to find in this neighborhood of late-Victorian homes. Clearing the sand away, I could see it was an old brass flat button, probably from about the 1830s… well before the Civil War! Originally it would have been gilt, but the plating on these seldom survives 175 years in the ground. It was backmarked, too, which I knew would help me date it when I got home and cleaned it up a bit. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a common Scovill or Waterbury button, and would be from a scarcer, lesser-known manufacturer.
One more relic with greenish verdigris popped up, but I’m not really sure what it was. It's just a lumpish piece of old copper or pot metal, badly encrusted and misshapen, and roughly the size and shape of my thumb. I think it is probably the twisted remnants of an old jar lid or oil lamp mechanism, but it’s hard to tell. That and two pieces of small lead shot were the remainder of the day’s finds.
As twilight came on and it became too dark to continue without potentially disturbing the homeowners, I left and drove down the streets of Old Town in the gathering gloom. Dozens of little witches, goblins, ghosts, and superheroes were out, now, and most of the houses were lit and decorated. Jack-o’-lanterns flickered on many of the porches.
My own trick-or-treat bag was not very full of the sort of goodies I’d hoped for (gold and silver instead of candy), but I can’t complain. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and evening.
Back home, when I got the old button cleaned up a little bit and examined it more closely, I could see it had a plain, stippled front. The backmark read, “. . . W.H. JONES & CO. . . . SUPERFINE”. I looked this up in the backmark index of Albert’s button book, and realized I’d gotten my wish: it was not a common backmark, and my supposition that it was from the 1830s was confirmed. Albert did not list specific dates for the W.H. Jones Company, but listed it merely as “1830s”, so apparently the company was not in business for much more than that one decade. While the condition of this particular button is not fantastic, I always love finding old flat buttons from before the Civil War, particularly when they have datable backmarks. This one relic made the outing a success.
-RWS
INDEX OF PAST ADVENTURES AND FINDS
I had "The Dream" the other night. It's a recurrent dream with me; nothing so noble as Martin Luther King's dream or The American Dream, but special enough to me that I have it once or twice a year. Many treasure hunters will be familiar with it, and perhaps some folks who have never been a treasure hunter will know "The Dream" well. To avoid boring you, I'll sum it up in a sentence: basically, I was out digging in the dirt (without a metal detector or any special equipment) and just combing my fingers through the loose soil, and pulling out all sorts of lovely old obsolete coins. The nice thing about having a metal detector is that one can make this dream come true, at least partially.
I knew today was destined to be a "dig day" when I stepped outside in the morning. It was too perfect to pass up the chance to get outdoors for a change. I'd only had one summer outing in August (which I still need to write up) and not surprisingly, it was way too hot then. Since the coming of cooler temperatures and lower humidity, I'd missed out on all sorts of lovely fall weather so far. The opportunity to go detecting had just not presented itself until today. I knew I had to go out and "put the coil to the soil" at least once before fall faded into winter, and in keeping with the words of Mel Fisher, one of history's greatest treasure hunters, my attitude was, "Today's the day".
I had an errand to run on St. Simons Island, so the first round of detecting took place there. There is what appears to be a new subdivision going in on the southern end of the island, and I saw "naked dirt" laid bare by bulldozers, which always catches my attention in certain areas. Especially when it's so close to historical areas, as this was. In fact, only seconds after stepping out of my vehicle, I spied the neck of an early-1900s medicine bottle peeking out of the loose dirt right next to where I'd parked. That's all it was- just a fragment- but it told me there was the potential of older finds here, even though all the surrounding buildings are much more modern.
The construction site was quiet, the heavy equipment idle, and there didn't seem to be anybody around. After I'd walked around a few minutes, I noticed a man in a landscaping truck who was about to drive away, and I asked him if he knew who the owner of the property was and whether it would be all right if I poked around a bit with the detector. He said the owner was out of town but probably wouldn't mind my detecting a little, especially if I could find the survey marker on the corner of the lot. I was happy to help. I looked for the survey marker but as it was in an area with lots of metallic trash and was nothing but a piece of steel rebar, I was unable to find it.
From the looks of the piles of gravel and the roads being put in, there wouldn't be much time to check out this site while the dirt was bare. It proved to be about as trashy as I had expected, with lots of pieces of wire and other bits of things you'd expect to find at a construction site. The junk was not so much from this most recent activity, but definitely modern and from the latter half of the 20th century. Still, there were colonial Spanish and English sites not too far away from here, so it was worth poking around to see what sorts of goodies the ground had in store for me.
While wandering the soon-to-be subdivision, I noticed a "tree spirit" carved in one of the live oaks. These carvings in the trees are a local tradition and lesser-known tourist attraction on St. Simons Island, but I could only recall seeing perhaps six or eight of them previously. To my surprise, I found a total of three here, all in this one area. Apparently these are newer carvings. My cousin was here from out of town recently, and mentioned that he was visiting a friend of his who does the "tree spirit" carvings. These obviously-newer three were probably his friend's handiwork. They are a nice art form, carved as they are into the mysterious, moss-strewn live oaks, and I guess they don't really harm the living trees. Live oak is a very hard wood, and must be very difficult to carve when it's "green" living wood like this. It's a hard enough wood that it was used to build the US Navy's first ships, and "Old Ironsides", the USS Constitution, did not in fact have iron sides, but rather timbers of Georgia live oak, cut right here on St. Simons Island.
The bottom of an old Coke bottle was lying exposed, so I picked it up. I could tell it was old, as it had the “Coca-Cola” script on the bottom, along with the number “31”. Perhaps that’s a date (1931)? I’ll have to research it further. Certainly what's left of the bottle looks like others I’ve seen from the 1920s and ‘30s. Not far away was a fragment of what might have been an old chamber pot. I wasn’t finding anything old with the detector, though. A modern quarter and cent turned up, but that was about all I got besides junk.
Finally another clear, coin-like signal on the detector proved to be a slightly older coin. It was a Wheat cent, and it came out of the sandy soil pristine and perfect, looking just like a non-dug one would. It was just a later-date common one, though: a 1957-D. This means there is probably silver hiding nearby, but this Wheatie was to be the only older coin I found on this site today.
I soon grew bored with the junk and decided to return to the mainland. As I was leaving, I noticed a little witch strolling down the sidewalk in a nearby residential area, accompanied by her mother. Ah, yes. It was time for the trick-or-treating to begin!
Back in Brunswick, on the mainland, I cruised my usual haunts: the parks and sidewalk areas of Old Town. I discovered one block where they’d taken up the very old brick sidewalk for repair. This is always a golden opportunity for a detectorist who wants to shoot in a “time capsule”, since many of the sidewalks here in Old Town are more than a century old, and the dirt beneath them has never touched a modern pulltab, aluminum can, or other bothersome piece of junk! I could feel my excitement rising. Coincidentally, this very stretch of sidewalk ran right in front of some yards I had detected previously, with good results.
Just as when they had replaced the ancient brick sidewalks in the nearby park, I found the area beneath this one to be surprisingly free of signals, except for a few rusty old square-headed nails. Obviously the layer that had been exposed was quite early. In fact, the pontiled bottom of an old black glass bottle told me that this sandy dirt might not have seen the light of day since the Civil War, or earlier!
Right in front of the house where my detecting partner Ty Herig used to live, I got a solid signal, and scratched around in the sandy soil.
My heart leapt as I recovered the target and saw it was round, and caked with the green verdigris of a relic that has lain buried for a very, very long time. At first I thought it was a coin. It was about the right size to be an old nickel. Perhaps it was an old Liberty Head or Shield nickel, from the late 1800s!
No, it was older than that, but not a coin. Actually, it was quite a bit older than anything I'd expected to find in this neighborhood of late-Victorian homes. Clearing the sand away, I could see it was an old brass flat button, probably from about the 1830s… well before the Civil War! Originally it would have been gilt, but the plating on these seldom survives 175 years in the ground. It was backmarked, too, which I knew would help me date it when I got home and cleaned it up a bit. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a common Scovill or Waterbury button, and would be from a scarcer, lesser-known manufacturer.
One more relic with greenish verdigris popped up, but I’m not really sure what it was. It's just a lumpish piece of old copper or pot metal, badly encrusted and misshapen, and roughly the size and shape of my thumb. I think it is probably the twisted remnants of an old jar lid or oil lamp mechanism, but it’s hard to tell. That and two pieces of small lead shot were the remainder of the day’s finds.
As twilight came on and it became too dark to continue without potentially disturbing the homeowners, I left and drove down the streets of Old Town in the gathering gloom. Dozens of little witches, goblins, ghosts, and superheroes were out, now, and most of the houses were lit and decorated. Jack-o’-lanterns flickered on many of the porches.
My own trick-or-treat bag was not very full of the sort of goodies I’d hoped for (gold and silver instead of candy), but I can’t complain. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and evening.
Back home, when I got the old button cleaned up a little bit and examined it more closely, I could see it had a plain, stippled front. The backmark read, “. . . W.H. JONES & CO. . . . SUPERFINE”. I looked this up in the backmark index of Albert’s button book, and realized I’d gotten my wish: it was not a common backmark, and my supposition that it was from the 1830s was confirmed. Albert did not list specific dates for the W.H. Jones Company, but listed it merely as “1830s”, so apparently the company was not in business for much more than that one decade. While the condition of this particular button is not fantastic, I always love finding old flat buttons from before the Civil War, particularly when they have datable backmarks. This one relic made the outing a success.
-RWS
INDEX OF PAST ADVENTURES AND FINDS
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This previously-unpublished outing was my only summer detector outing for 2008, and predictably, it was too hot. I ended up with sunburn on my neck.
The finds were not that great so I never wrote this up as a "Digs O' The Day" episode until just now, after posting my Halloween story. Since I took plenty of pictures on that August outing, though, I thought I'd give it a quick recap.
My friend Ty got us permission to detect at an old Victorian house in Old Town Brunswick. It looked promising.
When we rolled up, the most prominent feature of the front yard was a moldering old 1956 or '57 Thunderbird, partially mummified under a cover that was peeling away. Ty said the folks who previously occupied the house used to work on cars there.
It was plain to see they liked Fords. A 1980s-vintage smaller-sized LTD or Crown Victoria was being swallowed by a wild grapevine. I tried a couple of the grapes- muscadines- and they weren't bad at all. You have to pick the really dark purple ones that almost look black, though. Ty picked one that was not quite so dark and popped it into his mouth, whereupon his eyes bugged out and his face puckered into all kinds of hilarious contortions, much to my amusement. I guess it was pretty tart.
We got down to the business of detecting, but it was disappointing. I did manage to find a 1935 Wheat cent, but that was about it for older coins. There has to be some silver or older stuff in the yard, but we didn't find it. At least we weren't badly plagued by old stray auto parts in the ground, except for a couple of bolts and things.
Ty found a Wheat cent, too, but that was about it. We were sweating and beginning to get quite uncomfortable in the heat.
Behind the house, almost totally hidden by the brush, another dead car rotted away. This one was so badly disintegrated as to be pretty much unrecognizable. A vague hunch tells me it was probably once a Ford, though.
On the south side of the house, beneath some tall bamboo plants, there were even more cars. Yep, you guessed it- Fords. There was a full-sized Crown Vic beside the house, and inside the garage there was an old 1930-something Model A. Actually, the car under the blue tarp was the black sheep in the flock of Fords- it turned out to be a Cadillac.
With the sun and our boredom taking their toll, we left and went on out to Gascoigne Bluff on St. Simons Island. In one place, Ty noticed they'd cleared some woods for new construction, so we checked the site out. It proved to have obviously had an old building on the site- there was lots of old brick and glass in the dirt. Though the vanished building had obviously disappeared long ago and been overgrown by woods prior to the recent bulldozing, I was able to determine that it was not much older than the about the mid-1900s, from the types of glass and junk found in the immediate area. Still, it was in a part of the island that had been occupied continuously since the 1700s, so we checked it out. Even though the traces of the old ruined building were not that old, I knew they were old enough to potentially have some silver coins, too. Unfortunately the buried trash, mostly old tin cans, was pretty awful.
We moved off away from where the old building had been and the signals diminished greatly. I decided to focus on this "cleaner" area, though, since any earlier relics would be easier to find if I didn't have to dig through a layer of 1940s trash to get to them. Pretty much all that turned up were bullets, which wasn't that surprising since the area had been heavily wooded and visited only by hunters for the past 50 years or more.
The only interesting find I got was a small button (actually, I think it is a snap fastener), with an anchor and crown motif on it. It's pretty old, but almost certainly dates to the 20th century.
It wasn't that great an outing, but most of the time the heat and humidity sapped my enthusiasm. Oh, well- at least we got out for a little while.
-RWS
INDEX OF PAST ADVENTURES AND FINDS