cannibalfromhannibal
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Just a "short" update on last post. Probed out another barrel privy last dog day of August. Had to wait for the shade to cover my spot so I got a late start at 3:00. Didn't really matter as it was 5 foot shallow and easy digging. I opened it up and hit gravel on the top 1/2 foot and just underneath that began an ashy dark soil with a few shards. One piece looked really old, like early 60's and likely a fruit jar, I thought. Got a couple feet deep and started pulling out the usual white china and a few brown pottery pieces. Nothing really identifiable as to age, until another foot deeper and I pulled out my first piece of bottle glass. It was a nice lime green color and looked like a Mcleans Strengthening Cordial top. Sure enough, a bit later out comes the embossed remnants of the green panel. Never found the base or anything else, but was a nice early applied top one. Then I really started hitting the fruit jar shards. First came a couple un-embossed wax sealers with plum sized holes in them. Boo-hoo I thought. One crushed Mason's 1858, then some shards with no embossing but old as the earlier shard I first dug. Then up pops a top to a jar with strange lugs instead of threads. I know from experience these odd type closures can and likely bring big jar bucks and so I really got excited when I found one with some embossing. Looked like Aug, 14 186?, missing the last number. Then I pulled out the shard with the rest of the numbers.....1860! Cool! The early pit, I thought to myself. Next embossed piece was J. C. Baker's Patent! This HAD to be a rare one. Turns out to be RB#188. By the size it had to be a half gallon. Then out came another busted one, then another, each crushed worse than the previous one, all half gallons. On the bottom of the pit was some yellow ware from 2 different small dish type dinner ware. Thought I could glue one together but turned out I had pieces from each but not all of one. Came away with a cruddy olive or mustard slick looking from the early 70's and that was it. Still better to dig a 5 foot hole full of broken stuff than a 12 foot hole with nothing! I'm thinking with as much glass as was thrown in this shallow hole with a fairly narrow age range, it was possibly a temporary privy while the house was being built or more likely could have been a servants privy. There were no bottle shards with the exception of the McLeans and a plain un-embossed medicine. No sodas, whiskeys, inks, etc. Mostly kitchen stuff and fruit jars. Still missing the hole with the late 70's and all the 80's stuff, so I probed the space remaining in line with the other 3 holes and think I hit one more right in-between. Been itching to get back to it but heat index here for all the month of September has been 100 degrees plus, so I have to wait until later this week when we get a good cool-down. There is also an interesting gopher hole about 4 feet away on the property line going under the garage where I think I probed a stone liner to the house next door. Lucky me, it belongs to the folks who own the house behind where I've been digging! Who sez gophers are dum?