pa digger
Well-Known Member
I read a post on this forum from JWSCHAEFFER, Should i keep Digging. I sent an e mail to him telling him that we could find the privy and that if he was interested that we could get together. I got a positive reply and the day was set for Sept 26th 06. I arrived in Port Carbon pa met John at his place and we entered the back of his property that dates back to 1860's. Then he showed me the spot where he had found some old shards and a Pottsville soda. I then started to probe in that spot but thought that this spot was to far back from the house. I kept probing the back of the yard and the probe went in the ground easy for the 1st 2 feet and then hit rock. This went on for an hour or so. Then i started to probe closer to the house about 30 yards. The 1st couple attempts was the same as the rest of the yard and then all a sudden the probe went in the ground about 4 feet and this spot felt good. I kept close to that area with the same results. we started to open up that spot and about a foot down hit ash and a few bottles. We tried to use the shovel to take what i thought was just a very little pit down some more and kept hitting bottles, so i started to use the hand rake and a few more bottles came out then the bottles got a little slow coming out but the ash layer kept going in front of me, so i kept following the ash and bingo more bottles alot more bottles. This privy was loaded with glass some broke but most was whole. Infact the glass was packed in the privy so tight that i had trouble with even the hand rake as i did not want to brake any potential keepers. John was surprised at all the glass that was coming out of this privy. Then he told me that his wife was not to happy with him digging in the yard and that she thought he was a little crazy. We kept at it and the bottles kept comming. Johns wife was soon to arrive and she walked out to see how things were going. Her first response was wow is that the old outhouse? Then she was checking out all of the bottles found at that time. She asked how much longer would it be as it was starting to get a little late. we thought that the privy was about at it's end and i said maybe 45 mins, well that led to 2 + hours of nothing but glass. The privy dig went on for hours and at the end turned out to be a 4x4 x 5 deep square stone liner. we left it open for the night as it was getting dark and that we would fill the privy in the next day and split all the finds up. The number of whole bottles was great and we stopped counting at 240 and that was the whole ones. this privy did not produce anything of major value but we did get some neat things and a permission for the yard next door and John learned how to find, and dig a privy. Im glad that it turned out to be a good experience for John and now i think that he might be hooked on this hobby.
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