Privy digging in New England

[capsoda]

Hey Bram, One of the problems in Pensacola is that they had outhouses attached to the house with a barrel under it. A city sanitation worker would come around and empty the barrel ever so often. Sure cuts down on the number of privys to dig. Wonder where they dumped the barrels?

Might need to find out.

 

[bearswede]

Honey wagon hole...

 

[southern Maine diver]

Hi Ron...

Did somebody mention WATER...or suited up? or diving gear?[&:]

Wayne

 

[madpaddla]

Hello All:

How far at most can one expect to find a privy from the house? Knowing that there were houses scattered everywhere, some with no traces at all, privies are waiting to be found.

At least here in CT, I am for certain that we have more trees and woodland now than we have in almost 200 years. Due too the lack of farming now compared to then. Walking through the woods, there are stonewalls everywhere. Why are they so elusive in such a well documented area such as New England?

Madpaddla

 

[capsoda]

Hey Ben, Look good around the stone walls. People would just throw there trash over the fence too.

Privys were located not to far but far enough. Not to far for those freeeeezing winter nights [&:] but far enought for those hot smelly sumer days.[:'(]

 

[downeastdigger]

Hi Mad,
I have come to know that every house back before plumbing had a privy, but not necessarily a "dug" privy. Privies on farms usually weren't deep dug holes, but just a box underneath that got emptied out, or sometimes they were on the edge of a hill, and they would just oooooze down the side of the hill ( sorry if that was too graphic ). The point being, that farm houses generally didn't fill privy holes with trash, they carted all their trash to the edge of their property to a dump site, or dumped it in a river to be washed away, or maybe burned it once every season or so in their yard.

In the more densely populated areas, you couldn't do any of those things, so the idea of having a 6 foot deep privy hole made sense, and filling it with trash, and ash from the fireplace is something that happened when houses were close together. I try to find the "village center" of each town up here in NH/Maine. Then I use maps and find spots that had streets set up in a grid, with back to back houses where people couldnt dump their trash at the end of their property cause it would be in the neighbors yard. These are the best prospects for privies with trash.
I'm still learning after all these years. Cant wait for the "thaw".
Bram

 

[portland med. man]

me and maine pontil have done a few privies in maine ... and he probably has pics i think i may have a few more but.... privys are out there.. alot of them were shallow because of the rockie soil and alot of them were tray privies which were very common in maine ... i`m sure there is plenty of them out there but with the rockie content up here .... they sure are hard to find unless your one with the probe and did your homework and a little luck ,,, i`ve had some good luck with privies and trash pits in citys like portland and biddeford it`s all about research and persistance....

 

[Caretaker maine]

Bram, if you find out when plumbing went in in each town, then look at a map with houses on it a couple of years earlier, they should all have had privies in some way of another, did public sewage go in at a general time to all the places around here?, I'm going to start calling all the town hall and start asking and look for the age appropated maps, the way I figured there are thousands of privies out there, wonder if the old timers dug them during the great bottle dig of the 60's and 70's

 

[downeastdigger]

HI Caretaker,
I am of the opinion that privies were hardly ever dug back in the 1970s around here. There were so many great surface dumps to dig, with tons of bottles. I think we are scratching the surface as far as privy digging goes around here. I dont think there were deep privies filled with trash like there is in Brooklyn and Cinci etc, but I think there are a few like that, and probably many smaller ones. It only takes one good one full of pontils to make it all worth while!
Bram

 

[downeastdigger]

I dug through my desk and found a disk with pictures of a privy I dug last spring, it was a good one with lots of bottles..

This first one shows the house..