VTColonialDigger
Hero Member
This past week I took a trip down to Connecticut to detect my family homestead. I had a great time digging up relics my ancestors likely held and used.
A little backstory: My 5 times great grandfather William Randall purchased the house, affectionately called "Maple Hill" by the family, and the surrounding land on Christmas day 1800. The place was handed down from generation to generation. My family owned the house and land until a few years ago when my mom's parents passed away. Unfortunately the house and some of the land had to be sold. However, we still own a piece of the land amounting to roughly 80 acres. We sold the place before I got into detecting and ever since I started detecting I wanted to detect the place. This spring we contacted the owners and they said that I could detect around the house.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to find as much of my family's history as possible and there was so much land to search so my dad came along on my detecting adventures and searched with me.
DAY 1
We arrived at the house, began swinging our coils, and within 15 minutes my dad dug these two flying eagle cents by the side entry way
We continued, I dug a dandy button (I like to think it was dropped by William Randall!) and my dad dug a really cool gunpowder flask topper probably from the 1840's.
I don't want to this post to be crazy long so I will skip to the end of the day
In the end my dad found the flask topper, brass purse frame, 2 flying eagles, 1900 IHP, and a nice curry comb
These are my finds. Domed button, dandy button, copper (cleaned it up later, it looks like a KGII), 1920 merc, ox knob, and a 1916 dog license. The license is interesting because my mom remembers reading in an old letter from the 1920's that her aunt was very sad about the death of the dog at Maple Hill named Ted. We think this license belonged to Ted the dog.
DAY 2
It poured rain and it was tough working around that but we still found some cool stuff.
My dad found a nice dandy button, an oil tank tag, harmonica reed, iron hinge, and a nice spoon. I found a copper I later cleaned and discovered was a Connecticut copper, a piece of jewelry I unfortunately hit with my shovel, a pizza shaped piece of iron and some pieces of brass.
DAY 3
This day we detected around the old horse barn and explored the woods that we still own. We were just walking through the woods and saw this depression in the ground with a pile of rocks next to it:
You can see at the left of the picture the stone pile (probably from a chimney) and right next to where the tree is in the depression. At first I just disregarded it, but I ran my detector over the ground and got a bunch of iron signals. I dug a couple of them and they were all rose head, colonial nails. We stayed here for a while and I dug a large fragment of really old knife. My dad, who has knowledge about cutlery, says that he thinks it was made late 1600's- early 1700's.
We stayed around the cellar for a bit, but all we found was more rose head and hand forged "L head" trim nails.
Around the old horse barn my dad found the axe, oxen shoe, and horse shoe. I found a horse buckle and a hitching post ring.
All day 3 finds:
DAY 4
We decided to go back to the cellar we discovered the day before. We didn't find a whole lot more than a few rose head nails, a broken horse shoe, and little piece of rolled brass. Due to the lack of artifacts at this site, we believe that it was a temporary cabin that was inhabited very briefly. We also believe that it dates somewhere in the 1720-1740 range due to the age of the knife, and how primitive the horse shoe I found looks.
Next we decided to head to this rock lined cellar hole that my cousin, who knows the land really well, had showed me previously.
Stone lined cellar:
This was a much more productive site. I was able to find a large piece of a shoe buckle frame that was bent up (all natural I didn't touch it at all with my shovel), a nice cuff button, a iron table knife, a chunk of an old iron cook pot, and a carved piece of lead. My dad found some large pieces of what appears to be some form of skillet. Based on the relics recovered at this site I am thinking that this cellar dates 1750-1780.
These are all the finds for the day. The cabin site finds are on the top and the stone lined cellar finds are on the bottom.
Yesterday I spent most of the day traveling back to Vermont, and most of today I spent doing a basic cleaning to all my dad's and my own relics. I still need to set up an electrolysis unit to clean all the iron. Here are the pictures of everything cleaned up. I organized them by site:
(sorry about the sideways photo)
This horseshoe piece strikes me as really old. It looks to be so old because it doesn't have fullering (grooves for nail heads) and because the way it is bent over in the back to form the caulkin (square shaped part)
I'm sorry to overload anyone who is reading this with writing and pictures. I'm just still so thrilled to be able to dig up my family's history.
VTColonialDigger
A little backstory: My 5 times great grandfather William Randall purchased the house, affectionately called "Maple Hill" by the family, and the surrounding land on Christmas day 1800. The place was handed down from generation to generation. My family owned the house and land until a few years ago when my mom's parents passed away. Unfortunately the house and some of the land had to be sold. However, we still own a piece of the land amounting to roughly 80 acres. We sold the place before I got into detecting and ever since I started detecting I wanted to detect the place. This spring we contacted the owners and they said that I could detect around the house.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to find as much of my family's history as possible and there was so much land to search so my dad came along on my detecting adventures and searched with me.
DAY 1
We arrived at the house, began swinging our coils, and within 15 minutes my dad dug these two flying eagle cents by the side entry way
We continued, I dug a dandy button (I like to think it was dropped by William Randall!) and my dad dug a really cool gunpowder flask topper probably from the 1840's.
I don't want to this post to be crazy long so I will skip to the end of the day
In the end my dad found the flask topper, brass purse frame, 2 flying eagles, 1900 IHP, and a nice curry comb
These are my finds. Domed button, dandy button, copper (cleaned it up later, it looks like a KGII), 1920 merc, ox knob, and a 1916 dog license. The license is interesting because my mom remembers reading in an old letter from the 1920's that her aunt was very sad about the death of the dog at Maple Hill named Ted. We think this license belonged to Ted the dog.
DAY 2
It poured rain and it was tough working around that but we still found some cool stuff.
My dad found a nice dandy button, an oil tank tag, harmonica reed, iron hinge, and a nice spoon. I found a copper I later cleaned and discovered was a Connecticut copper, a piece of jewelry I unfortunately hit with my shovel, a pizza shaped piece of iron and some pieces of brass.
DAY 3
This day we detected around the old horse barn and explored the woods that we still own. We were just walking through the woods and saw this depression in the ground with a pile of rocks next to it:
You can see at the left of the picture the stone pile (probably from a chimney) and right next to where the tree is in the depression. At first I just disregarded it, but I ran my detector over the ground and got a bunch of iron signals. I dug a couple of them and they were all rose head, colonial nails. We stayed here for a while and I dug a large fragment of really old knife. My dad, who has knowledge about cutlery, says that he thinks it was made late 1600's- early 1700's.
We stayed around the cellar for a bit, but all we found was more rose head and hand forged "L head" trim nails.
Around the old horse barn my dad found the axe, oxen shoe, and horse shoe. I found a horse buckle and a hitching post ring.
All day 3 finds:
DAY 4
We decided to go back to the cellar we discovered the day before. We didn't find a whole lot more than a few rose head nails, a broken horse shoe, and little piece of rolled brass. Due to the lack of artifacts at this site, we believe that it was a temporary cabin that was inhabited very briefly. We also believe that it dates somewhere in the 1720-1740 range due to the age of the knife, and how primitive the horse shoe I found looks.
Next we decided to head to this rock lined cellar hole that my cousin, who knows the land really well, had showed me previously.
Stone lined cellar:
This was a much more productive site. I was able to find a large piece of a shoe buckle frame that was bent up (all natural I didn't touch it at all with my shovel), a nice cuff button, a iron table knife, a chunk of an old iron cook pot, and a carved piece of lead. My dad found some large pieces of what appears to be some form of skillet. Based on the relics recovered at this site I am thinking that this cellar dates 1750-1780.
These are all the finds for the day. The cabin site finds are on the top and the stone lined cellar finds are on the bottom.
Yesterday I spent most of the day traveling back to Vermont, and most of today I spent doing a basic cleaning to all my dad's and my own relics. I still need to set up an electrolysis unit to clean all the iron. Here are the pictures of everything cleaned up. I organized them by site:
(sorry about the sideways photo)
This horseshoe piece strikes me as really old. It looks to be so old because it doesn't have fullering (grooves for nail heads) and because the way it is bent over in the back to form the caulkin (square shaped part)
I'm sorry to overload anyone who is reading this with writing and pictures. I'm just still so thrilled to be able to dig up my family's history.
VTColonialDigger
Last edited:
Upvote
62
........ so, quit slackin' off 
.........whud about the BOTTLE DUMP
