PhilaBottles
Well-Known Member
Memorial Day Digging - Philly Style
We dug two holes yesterday thanks to Chris and his supernatural abilities. Nobody could find any holes on this particular construction site, but Chris managed to use his psychic powers and some maps to locate not only one brickliner and one double barrel, but make sure they had stuff in them too. The squad included 6 of us since most were just curious onto where and if there was a brickliner to dig: Me, George, Chris, Doug, Russel, and Ken.
The first privy was a 6 or 8 foot deep double barrel liner cut in half. It was full of 18th century stuff all mixed up, mostly shards that wont go back well except maybe a mallet bottle. There was a cool little 18th century pipe too.
After Chris told me where to probe, I could feel it was a hole. The brickliners in this part of Philly go an average of 22-25 feet deep and we said hell yeah.
We exposed all the walls and it turned out to be about 5 ½ feet across.
We started hitting flat civil war age trash 5 feet down. We were getting very excited since the layer was this high up!
At about 8 feet we had 4 stoneware beers and some other bottles. There wasn’t much pottery in this hole to even bother, but Doug tried his hardest to find every little shard. Chris probed it at this depth and hit something that felt like bottom another 3 feet down. We were still unsure if this was a very hard cap with 18 feet of pontils underneath it, or natural bottom.
With the occasional bottle here and there, we dug down to see if the brick stopped at the depth Chris probed, or if it was a cap that opened up the best privy-ever-soon-to-be-dug. It was bottom. We were all a little sad, but then looked at the finds and all agreed that this hole was well worth the beating sun.
We filled the hole in and split up the finds:
4 stoneware beers...
FRS McKinneys Mead
C. Whittemore
Johnson & Co Knickerbocker Mead (blue band)
Johnston & Co Mead (blue band)
The other bottles found...
Cummings teal pony
Dyottsville Patent Whiskey in olive
teal Gargling Oil Lockport, NY
IP green Dyottsville Brown Stout
aqua ponies...McKinney, O’brian, and McCrudden & Campbell
misc unembossed meds
We also got one really nice hand painted China marble. You’ll have to ask George for a picture.
Thanks for looking and keep digging, Matt.
We dug two holes yesterday thanks to Chris and his supernatural abilities. Nobody could find any holes on this particular construction site, but Chris managed to use his psychic powers and some maps to locate not only one brickliner and one double barrel, but make sure they had stuff in them too. The squad included 6 of us since most were just curious onto where and if there was a brickliner to dig: Me, George, Chris, Doug, Russel, and Ken.
The first privy was a 6 or 8 foot deep double barrel liner cut in half. It was full of 18th century stuff all mixed up, mostly shards that wont go back well except maybe a mallet bottle. There was a cool little 18th century pipe too.
After Chris told me where to probe, I could feel it was a hole. The brickliners in this part of Philly go an average of 22-25 feet deep and we said hell yeah.
We exposed all the walls and it turned out to be about 5 ½ feet across.
We started hitting flat civil war age trash 5 feet down. We were getting very excited since the layer was this high up!
At about 8 feet we had 4 stoneware beers and some other bottles. There wasn’t much pottery in this hole to even bother, but Doug tried his hardest to find every little shard. Chris probed it at this depth and hit something that felt like bottom another 3 feet down. We were still unsure if this was a very hard cap with 18 feet of pontils underneath it, or natural bottom.
With the occasional bottle here and there, we dug down to see if the brick stopped at the depth Chris probed, or if it was a cap that opened up the best privy-ever-soon-to-be-dug. It was bottom. We were all a little sad, but then looked at the finds and all agreed that this hole was well worth the beating sun.
We filled the hole in and split up the finds:
4 stoneware beers...
FRS McKinneys Mead
C. Whittemore
Johnson & Co Knickerbocker Mead (blue band)
Johnston & Co Mead (blue band)
The other bottles found...
Cummings teal pony
Dyottsville Patent Whiskey in olive
teal Gargling Oil Lockport, NY
IP green Dyottsville Brown Stout
aqua ponies...McKinney, O’brian, and McCrudden & Campbell
misc unembossed meds
We also got one really nice hand painted China marble. You’ll have to ask George for a picture.
Thanks for looking and keep digging, Matt.
]I wish we had us a bunch of perty sodies round here.Good luck on your next one and keep a shine on those shovels,Doug
