DEC. 19th Digging Results

Hello, again. Boy do I have a treat for you this time.
This is the 3rd pit in this yard, and there is no shortage of goodies in this one either! This is a new location for us and seems to be a good place to stick around and explore for a while. The only down side of digging here is that the ground is all clay, also being close to Detroit posses its own problems. The land here will be up for sale soon anyway I'm sure, and the next thing you know it will be gone, so we had to move quick.
The photo above shows some of the original 1870's wood lining from the privy. The clay preserves the wood better than nitrogen rich topsoil ever could, providing a glimpse of the construction techniques used.

Carl and I started this pit without a test hole because we knew it was loaded from the probing tests. After removing the sod and placing it carefully to the side, I noticed the biggest root traveling diagonally across the top of the privy. This was good and bad. It was good because the tree it belonged to was a black walnut tree being no less than 100 years old. The bad part was the size of the root, it was about a foot in diameter. We knew we would be dealing with this root as part of the team instead of removing it.



The signs of a good pit: Broken pottery, very rusty flakes of metal, ash, and most of all blown bottle necks!

I decided to make friends with the root (because it was there first) and use it to my advantage.

It didn't take long to get our blood pumping when we saw this dark green large bottle showing its backside in the hole.

KEEP EM COMING!

This was still in the top fill dirt, or ash I should say. An olive green quart MISSISQUOI MINERAL water. Man I was pumped!
The ash was loaded with whole perfect large bottles, just stacked like pancakes. I couldn't believe how many bottles were just crammed in on top of eachother without being damaged.

Let's see here,...we have a WARNER'S SAFE,....ummm

The bottle pile is starting to grow!

That's it Carl, hold the root, love the root.

The types of bottles that were coming out hinted towards a business privy.

Right about now I ran out of space on my camera, so the rest of the pics are from after the dig. The bottle Carl is uncovering is a nice dark aqua PA. SQUAT SODA. The pit is getting older.

Pretty cool MINERAL WATER

This neat little FIGURAL BEAR bottle was in there along with the marble. It was probably a candy container. The PENNY was found under the sod close to the surface. The PONTILED MARBLE was down at the bottom.

This is a late throw I'm sure! About 10-15 years older than the SQUAT SODA. This is a real neat little pontiled PONDS EXTRACT. It needs a professional cleaning, but is still beautiful.

Pontiled bottles are so cool! Look at how crude the bottom is. This little jewel is very old, 130-140 years probably!

Well, I wish I would have had the patience to down load the pictures off the camera for a picture of this last one comming out, but.....I didn't. Check out this jim dandy. We almost started to fill in the hole when tucked away in a hidden corner this was uncovered, probably missed by the dippers like the PONDS was. It's a perfect 8-1/8 inch COBALT FARRAND & WILLIAMS & Co. DETROIT!!!! the larger varient.

This is the second one of these we've found in the last 2 years. Now this one is going on my top shelve. It has everything going for it. I must tell you, Carl is getting real spoiled now. He dosn't even want to look at it if it's not cobalt and pontiled. He didn't get to go through the graduation process of automatic machine made bottles in country dumps to privies like I did. Oh well, he's not complaining. Talk to you soon, Scott.

Click here for more pics!

Click here for more pics!