paleomaxx
Hero Member
- Aug 14, 2016
- 841
- 6,887
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- 6
- Detector(s) used
- Deus XP
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
This past weekend was a little on the cold side, but I still managed to explore three new sites. I'll be posting about the other two shortly as I'm still researching and cleaning those finds, but this site was a nice little hunt with one find in particular I wanted write about. I was door knocking and having little success until this house. On my old maps there were two home sites almost in top of each other, but today only one house. The couple there were very nice and interested in the local history as well.
We walked the property for awhile and he showed me where the barn foundation was as well as the remains of a spring house and the intact cellar hole from one of the homes. It turns out their home wasn't build on the site of the old house, but a little to the side so the cellar hole is still intact and right next to their driveway! The only downside is that it was used as a trash burn pit in the 1920's and 30's so there's a ridiculous amount of iron in the ground. It was one of those times I'm very glad I bought a Deus so I switched it to the fast program and very slowly gridded.
As expected I dug about 50 pounds of large iron, but I also did okay with non-ferrous finds.
I found a fragment of a huge crotal bell marked "6" and three halter buckles that still had bits of leather. Almost an entire clock mechanism and a sheet brass finial-type piece that was on the surface. Incredibly I did find a few coins in all the iron noise.
In addition to the 1930 wheat penny and 1903 Indian Head penny, I found what I'm fairly sure is a train flattened penny. There's an old railroad bed about 1000 feet away that was built in the 1860's and ripped up by the early 1900's, but some things never change.
The star find though is definitely this:
It was actually on the surface just under the leaves, but the pine tree acid still managed to do a number on the brass. I don't dare clean it further, but it has enough detail to identify it as an Oliver Boutwell 1863 store token. Here's a non-dug example:
Boutwell built and operated a grain mill in Troy NY and this was actually his second series of tokens. He put out a hard times token in 1835, but examples of them are obscenely rare. This token is quite common, but the homesite is a good 30 miles from Troy so it did some traveling before being lost. What's cool is that I work just down the road from where his mill was located and drive past the old address from time to time. I even found an 1847 image of the Troy waterfront and the mill is included at the far right.
My google search even turned up photos of his gravestone in Oakwood cemetery; the same cemetery where Uncle Sam is buried.
While it's certainly not my rarest find to date; my favorite finds are the ones that turn up a treasure-trove of history and for it to be local history just makes it all the better.
We walked the property for awhile and he showed me where the barn foundation was as well as the remains of a spring house and the intact cellar hole from one of the homes. It turns out their home wasn't build on the site of the old house, but a little to the side so the cellar hole is still intact and right next to their driveway! The only downside is that it was used as a trash burn pit in the 1920's and 30's so there's a ridiculous amount of iron in the ground. It was one of those times I'm very glad I bought a Deus so I switched it to the fast program and very slowly gridded.
As expected I dug about 50 pounds of large iron, but I also did okay with non-ferrous finds.
I found a fragment of a huge crotal bell marked "6" and three halter buckles that still had bits of leather. Almost an entire clock mechanism and a sheet brass finial-type piece that was on the surface. Incredibly I did find a few coins in all the iron noise.
In addition to the 1930 wheat penny and 1903 Indian Head penny, I found what I'm fairly sure is a train flattened penny. There's an old railroad bed about 1000 feet away that was built in the 1860's and ripped up by the early 1900's, but some things never change.
The star find though is definitely this:
It was actually on the surface just under the leaves, but the pine tree acid still managed to do a number on the brass. I don't dare clean it further, but it has enough detail to identify it as an Oliver Boutwell 1863 store token. Here's a non-dug example:
Boutwell built and operated a grain mill in Troy NY and this was actually his second series of tokens. He put out a hard times token in 1835, but examples of them are obscenely rare. This token is quite common, but the homesite is a good 30 miles from Troy so it did some traveling before being lost. What's cool is that I work just down the road from where his mill was located and drive past the old address from time to time. I even found an 1847 image of the Troy waterfront and the mill is included at the far right.
My google search even turned up photos of his gravestone in Oakwood cemetery; the same cemetery where Uncle Sam is buried.
While it's certainly not my rarest find to date; my favorite finds are the ones that turn up a treasure-trove of history and for it to be local history just makes it all the better.
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