A few weeks ago I went out to a vacant lot here in Texas that, according to the maps, had some age to it. Did some probing and the lot probed real strange...couldn't get a good read on it anywhere. I decided to punch a test hole in one area that felt a little strange; the hole ended up being pure sand with bottles scattered in it starting about 3' down and going about 8' down. The first bottle out was a slick round open pontil puff...that got the blood flowing! We don't dig pontil stuff in Texas often. Second bottle was a pontiled Davis Pain Killer, followed by two smooth-based early slicks, followed by a pontiled Radway with New York misspelled "New Yok". There was a "Patent" whiskey...looks to be a British example. Deeper in the hole and off to the side were 6 stoneware beers and several black glass bottles and early wine bottles. Sadly, these sandy holes are almost impossible to dig deep as they tend to be wet and the sand just comes in and comes in. I ended up abandoning the hole where it dove down deep...probably more stuff in it but will have to come back when it is a bit dryer. I was caving in the top of the hole when the find of the day popped out...a "E. Priester/Richmond/Tex." soda...was very excited to find something local! I filled in the hole (found a pontiled umbrella ink in the process), then dug two additional "dry" holes. The fourth hole I dug ended up being a barrel privy just packed to the brim with smashed blackglass bottles and wines...in the very bottom of the privy there were three early wines and that was it. I probed around the exterior of the privy and found an area that felt like there might be some glass...sure enough, in a space only about 2' square, there were 4 Gilkas (one with the fancy embossing on the side panels and three of the early ones that just are embossed "J.A. Gilka"), 6 Hostetter's Bitters (all L&W base-embossed, in several shades of amber), a couple of squat blackglass bottles, and some more wines. It petered out quickly but still capped off a great day of digging early Texas stuff...the Richmond bottle is probably the newest bottle I found and most of the stuff dated 1860's-1870's. My favorites (besides the Richmond bottle) were the misspelled Radway and the great lady's leg blackglass bottle with the crooked neck.
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