Old Home Site

[pplinker]

I found a flat area on our wooded property where there is a lot of glass shards in the surface dirt. Was trying to make sure if it was a home site so i took the metal detector and found a lot of iron and nails. So there must have been a house there. Found one sunken place that might be a privey, because there was a small intact piece of tin. All the metal pieces were about 7 to 8 inches deep and wore me out digging them and then they were just junk. I found a zinc canning lid so it might not be that old of a site unless they lived there a long time before they got those kind of lids. A lot of the glass shards were blue likethey were old, but I only found one intact bottle. It was clear and looked like it might be a simple vanilla bottle. How do i find all the bottles that must be there someplace?

Penny

 

[FloridaDigger]

Penny; ...looking for the depressions is a good choice; ...the ground should be softer at the depression than the rest of the land. Always search around old large trees; as thats where house dumps & privys are often found. Many times the trash pit is just outside the back of the house (sometimes only 5 feet). The back property line is the usual location. Often fruit trees will grow in the privy/trash pit as seeds were thrown away. It is possible that the trash was hauled-off to another location---not always on the property. You need a probing rod; ..will help a lot. You can buy professional probing rods from septic tank supply places. I would also set your metal detector to high discriminate to locate silver coins; ...if you find some coins you can determine the original house location. Good luck!

 

[pplinker]

FloridaDigger,

Thank you so much for your kind response. I wouldn't have thought about old seed pits being thrown in the privey and growing trees. There's no fruit trees, but i'll still remember that for other places in the future. I tried probing in some low spots, to no avail. In two days' searching, i found no coins and no intact bottles or jars and besides nails and cast iron junk, only found a few items of interest. Found 6 old marbles in the course of digging for metal stuff. One bottle cap in good shape that said Old Mr. Boston. I did a search on that and find it is a brand of rum or similar. Also found a small round metal tag stamped WPA and some numbers, like it might have been a workers identification. That dated the site to 1935 at least.

It beats the heck out of me how there could be broken glass shards all over, 8 inches under the ground and no dump with whole intact bottles and good stuff. There's a little washout not far from where the back door probably was, but if they dumped trash there it might have all got washed away in 70 some years. I usually find things when i stop looking so hard so maybe i'll eventually run across a good dump site there. So this was just a little update; again thanks for the good tips.

Penny

 

[pplinker]

Update...
Quite by accident, i may have found the privy site. I was digging an iron signal and hit a piece of formed concrete. It was getting dark and i didnt' have a big enough shovel, so i was only able to uncover one corner. The concrete is about 6" thick with a perfect square corner and seems to be rectangular, and of course, open in the middle. I have to go out of town, so i'll go back with a shovel in two days. I'm pretty excited and hope it will be worthwhile. Still no luck locating a dump, so i hope there's some good s#!T in there, LOL.

Penny

 

[FloridaDigger]

Penny; ...the concrete thing you found could be a septic tank, ...ewwwww, ..or it could be a cistern(tank to hold fresh water), ..its hard to say without being there.. also nearby creeks & lakes were very popular dump sites, as well as wooded lots that dont have houses on them, ..maybe explore a little farther out next time. Marbles are cool to find; ..everyone likes marbles.

 

[FloridaDigger]

One other point to make; ...privys were just a wooden outhouse setting on top of a hand dug hole; ..up north it was common to rock line the walls of the hole, but I have not seen any with concrete.

 

[baltbottles]

I have dug ponitl age privies in major cities with square concrete footers for the outhouse building. I beleieve these were likely added towards the end of the privies life not when it was first built. Also often the outhuse pit may have been filled in and the outhouse building was converted to a tool shed or other small out building. This may also explain the concrete footers as a later addition

Chris

 

[pplinker]

It is an outhouse, so far i've found lime layers, some pieces of leather shoes and two bottles:

 

[pplinker]

I quit digging because of dripping sweat so bad and my abdominal muscles were cramping and my fingers too, so i had to come home and take a bunch of potassium pills and gatorade.

here's the two bottles. Does anyone know what they might be? I'm guessing the green one is a caugh syrup and the one with the handle might be a table syrup bottle. Please help if you know and i'm sorry if the bottles aren't old enough for this forum, but please excuse me and help because this is my first outhouse dig.

 

[pplinker]

I'd also like someone to explain how bottles got dropped down the toilet. It looks like maybe liquor bottles would be dropped out there, like if some one went out there to sneak a drink. Or, maybe pop bottles if the kids snitched a bottle and went out there to drink it. But i don't see why other bottles would end up in the toilet.

Remember, help me with those bottles, i'd like to know what they are.

Thanks a lot,

Penny