Well this seemed like an ideal February weekend to dig these two privies. After all it was an unseasonable warm February day and all we had to do was let the home owner know we were ready to dig. We even had them already staked out with pin flags last fall. Both pits were located in the home owners vegetable garden directly in back of his house…straight out the door near the back property line. Scott (also known locally as the privymaster) located the pits last fall while doing some of the neighbors yards. It was a good idea…since the town that we're digging has been hit hard by diggers…some good… and some real amateurs.
We arrived at approximately 9:00 in the morning, unload the tarps, shovels, and whatever else we thought we might need. First step was to line up the boundaries of the privies to avoid any unnecessary tunneling …so we could go straight down through the center. Indications from Scotts earlier probing lead us to believe that one of the privies was newer and the other was perhaps the oldest. The house appeared to date from the 1870s..so we hoped that one of the two privies was the first one used. Scott began on the newer one which when probed definitely had more glass in it, while I began digging the older pit.
About four feet down I pulled out two early hinge mold utility bottles. A good sign!! This was the early privy and it should have some nice bottles in it. Just then Scott yelled over and started pulling out fruit jars from his pit..a Gem jar and a couple of 1858 ground top masons. Both jars had wires sticking out of them which were connected to some early form of electrical apparatus. It looked like someone was making early batteries out of the jars. Scott continued to pull out bottles and jars from the hole, right and left. Almost all the bottles that Scott pulled out were plain laboratory type utility bottles. Most were unembossed with the exception of ten A. Trasks Magnetic Ointment bottles and a few Dr. Shoops medicines.
We concluded that the owner of the house back then must have been running a few experiments in the house given the types of bottles in the privy. We did find some local drug store bottles that neither one of us had ever seen before. So we were pretty excited about those. All in all, Scott's privy produced about 50 bottles. Not to bad. The best fruit jar was a very crude 1858 Mason No. 7. Now back to my hole. I also found ten A. Trasks, except they were much cruder than those that came out of Scott's privy. Interestingly enough no fruit jars came out on my privy. Most likely because it was too old to even consider making early forms of batteries. Whereas Scott's privy dated to about 1900. Both privies went down about 5 feet. A little shallow for the area we're digging but still worth investigating nonetheless.
We didn't find anything great…but that happens…more often than not. The point is we had a blast digging those two pits. As we were filling up the holes, the next door neighbor came out and asked if we found anything. We showed her what we found and she began to tell us that some diggers came by her place several months ago and dug a pit. After some discussions we found out that they only dug one pit on her property even though her house was on a lot that once had a much older house on it according to our maps. We figured the diggers didn't know this, so we asked her if we could probe the yard for the other pit/pits. She agreed, and within minutes Scott located the pit. Stay tuned for the dig the other guy missed!
" Eh...I found a full set of dentures..
