Mystery House Journal

[robertk]

Just about the time I got my new Deus II, I was looking at an old map of my neighborhood and discovered that in 1940, there was a house sitting in what is now my front yard. This surprised me greatly, so I started hunting old photos and found a 1955 aerial photo, with no trace of the house. So it was there sometime before 1940 to get "on the map", but was completely vanished by 1955.

So I worked out the distances from the old map and got a good guess to where the house was, and started hunting. I quickly discovered that my entire front yard is littered with iron.

I don't know when the house was built, but I'm assuming mid to late 1800's. So far I haven't found anything with a date on it, but what little I have found seems to back up those dates.

So I'm starting this thread to post interesting things, mostly for feedback as I try to understand the history of those who were here before I was. Here's some of the stuff I've found so far. Any comments on what they are, or what they are used for, are welcome.

This was identified (thanks to this board!) as a suspender adjuster, pre-1920.


And this one is part of a victorian bed rail attachment.


This one is a spoon, obviously. Silver plated, well worn. I haven't found an exact match on the pattern and I can't quite read the maker's mark, but the stuff I find that's close is in the early 1880's. Interestingly, I found this standing vertically in the ground, big end down. It took some digging to extract it.



I've also found a few shotgun shell end caps. At first I ignored these thinking they were just trash from a careless modern hunter, but after investigating, these are from around 1900 (Union Metal Cartridge Company, "New Club" style, produced between 1891 and 1911).


And some iron stuff...



I've found several of those square nuts. They look like they might be blacksmith-made because while the hole diameter is pretty consistent, the size and thickness of the nut itself varies quite a bit. And that thing that looks like a telegraph insulator is a mystery -- iron wouldn't make a very good insulator.

Then there's this partial plate -- quarter inch thick and heavy. Maybe a stove part?



And then there's this thing.

It's about 8" diameter, about an inch thick, with a 1/4" "rim" around one side, totally flat on the other. And it's heavy -- weighing exactly 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs) in its current state. No obvious handle or anything to indicate use.

So there's what I know so far. I will post more as I discover it...

 

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[ToddsPoint]

You’re definitely in the 1800s or early 1900s. I hope you start getting into some complete bottles soon!

 

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[robertk]

Had a couple of thunderstorms roll through yesterday, leaving a tree down that I have to deal with today, so not much digging. I did get a few minutes in between storms but didn't find a lot. Several more bottoms that probably go with the necks I've found, one fragment that says "R. H" on it -- there is more of the same color glass still in the ground next to where I found this, so maybe there will be more -- and finally, a piece of bone, probably deer or small cow from the look of it, with a tool mark across it.



I'm guessing there is a cap layer about a foot down, because the dirt changes from a nice dark brown to a light cream color. the lighter color seems softer and finer than the dirt above it. I've dug plenty of holes in this yard (setting fence posts, burying utilities, etc), and do not recall seeing such a transition anywhere else. Hopefully it's a cap and not already the bottom. But I have only just started scratching into that layer so who knows.

I've read some things online about people who dig out a privy in a day or two. I really don't see how. Granted, I only get an hour or so each day to work on it, but still, this is going to take a while, especially if it's very deep (and I have no clue how deep it might be). Kinda like the cellar hole -- no clue on that one either. But it's not like they're going anywhere, so I have time.

 

[Almy]

Fun! And if you could dig it out quickly, the fun would be over quickly too1
I think the bone is actually a piece of cow horn. Note the taper.

 

[robertk]

I spent what felt like forever last night digging out a particularly large stone that was sitting right on top of a bottle. All I could see was the end of the bottle, but the stone was sitting right on it, so I couldn't pry at it or otherwise get any leverage to pull it out, so I just had to dig all around it until I got it out.



It took a long time, lots of other smaller rocks wedged in around it, and several random pieces of glass to investigate along the way, but I finally got it out. It's the biggest rock to come out of there yet, as big as the bucket I use for all the glass pieces.



With that big rock sitting on the bottle, I knew it was not likely to be intact, despite the appearance of the end. And it wasn't. But, it was only broken a little bit (the top and a sliver in the back), and the broken pieces were right there with it, so I was able to mostly reassemble the bottle. Here it is coming out of the ground, and after cleaning and reassembling.



The embossing reads "HAZELTINE & CO", "PISO'S CURE", and "FOR CONSUMPTION". According to what I could find, this was a quack medicine made by a company started in 1864. The company name changed to "The Piso Company" in 1894, so presumably this bottle came from between 1864 and 1894. Apparently the "cure" didn't actually remedy consumption (tuberculosis), but made you not care, because it contained opium, cannabis, chloroform, and alcohol in varying proportions depending on the year. It sold for 25 cents a bottle. There is a history of the company here (PDF) if you're curious.

I also retrieved a larger fragment that was the rest of the "R. H" fragment I found the other day. Now I can deduce that it said "DR. HARTER'S", which means this is another medicine bottle. I can't tell exactly what kind from the fragment, and he sold several formulations, including a "Wild Cherry Bitters" that was very popular. The company was in St. Louis from 1855 to 1895, then was sold and moved. More info here if you're curious.


So, today I learned that whoever lived in the mystery house was not always in good health, and I'm guessing they had, or at least thought they had, tuberculosis at some point. I also found a small fragment the other day (that I failed to post) that had the partial words "COU" and "S" on it -- perhaps "cough syrup"? That would be consistent, but with such a small fragment I can't be sure that's what it said.

This is fun.

 

[robertk]

Last night was more rock removal than relic recovery (widening the hole -- rocks go "out" more than "down", at least so far). But I did find another piece of a stove, and the bottom of a Bixby bottle that apparently once contained "blacking" (shoe polish) from around 1883. I'll put the stove piece in Evaporust to see if I can get a look at whatever is on the front. Kinda looks like it might be a big "M". If nothing else, I'm keeping the local wildlife entertained.

 

[robertk]

More bits and pieces last night...



A stove leg, some other cast iron bits, lots of broken glass, what appears to be part of a teacup, some bottle bits, and what I'm guessing is part of a lid or something decorative pottery -- and one glass mystery item.

Does anyone know what this is?


Here's the pottery piece. Hollow inside, broken all around, like maybe the dome of a lid or something. About 3" diameter.


And here's the mystery glass item. Looks like maybe the bottom of a jar or vase. Scalloped edge all around but flat on one side. Writing on the bottom says "MEYERS & NEUBAUER N.Y." I have searched the internet for several variations of that phrase and found zero hits, so I have no idea what that might have been. Does anyone know? I'll repost it over in the what is it forum too. Very curious.

 

[robertk]

Slow going the last couple of days. Found a metal box which disintegrated when I picked it up, the top of a can or something, another piece of that bird feeder, and a few more pieces of a teacup. I'm slowly gluing the bird feeder and teacup back together. I don't expect them to be complete or useful at all, I just think it's neat to see them come together.

But I do have a question....

Last night I "mapped" the area, trying to get a feel for what it was like back in the day. So far I know the location of the privy, the cellar, probably the house, and maybe a trash dump -- that bears further investigation. But I also noticed something yesterday that I don't recall seeing before. There's a circle on the ground where the grass isn't growing, or at least not growing the same as the rest of it. Neither my wife nor I had noticed it before, but we don't really spend a ton of time in that part of the yard, plus the drought this summer has made the grass "thinner" than usual.

So here's my very crude and not at all to scale map of the area:

We're assuming the house was where the dense stand of trees and brush are now, though I have explored there and find no evidence of a foundation or anything yet. Too much brush to swing the coil effectively, though I intend to try in the fall when the weeds are dying back.

I probably mislabeled the privy -- should have said length and width, not depth.. It's 6 feet in one direction, 4 feet in the other. I don't know yet how deep it is. I don't know how deep the cellar is yet either, but the depression in the ground is about 16 feet square.

So here's the question: That circle on the ground... It's pretty much a perfect circle, 15 feet in diameter. The grass is much thinner for a consistent one foot or so "ring" around the edge. So I'm assuming something must have been there or disturbed the ground to make that happen. What sort of structure was round, would have been in the back yard, and would have been used in the 1880s? The only round structure I could think of is a silo, but it seems small for that, and oddly positioned (it's too close to the house, and only 15 feet from the edge of the circle to the privy, and about 30 feet to the cellar -- my drawing doesn't reflect that very well).

And a second question -- how far from the house would the trash dump be? There is a place maybe around a hundred yards away where there is some modern junk piled up, and I always thought it an odd place to dump stuff. But maybe if there was already a trash dump there, the modern stuff just got piled on top of it? Is it worth investigating, being that far from the house? There are three rather large piles of rocks in the vicinity of the trash pile, and the previous owners were not farmers, so no particular reason to pile up rocks -- maybe those are from "back in the day", if that matters?

Thoughts?

 

[robertk]

I detected in the circle last night, but didn't find anything unusual vs what I find in other parts of the area.



A strange long tapered rod with a "head" on one end, a horseshoe, a jar lid liner, a railroad spike, a square nut, an extremely worn ring, a buckle, a stove tool, a tiny hook, an unknown iron thing, some misc bits, and what appears to be a modern plumbing fitting or something -- no clue how that came to be out there.

If anyone knows what this is, I'm curious. I'll probably post this on the what is it forum as well.

 

[robertk]

The digging has been super hard lately -- the privy hole is mostly clear of the "big rock fill layer" and I made it through the "fine ash layer" and now I'm down to the "just regular old dirt" layer. But that regular old dirt hasn't seen much rain since May, so it is hard as concrete. If I were just digging a hole, I'd use a pick or a crowbar. A fork or shovel wouldn't do much good. But since there's supposedly glass down there waiting for me, that's not really an option. So I flake it off one little patch at a time...

I found the other half of the bottom of a nice drinking glass (so now I have the complete bottom but the sides are missing entirely), and another piece of that glass bird feeder. I've got about 3/4 of it total now.

So this morning I thought since that ground is so hard, and since what little rain we have gotten has loosed up the rocks in the cellar hole, maybe I'd switch and work on that one a bit later. So my wife and I walk over to it, and I see something shiny. I say "What is that? You see that little glint of gold?" and pointed to it. She said "Huh. That does look like gold." So I walked around, changing angles to make sure it wasn't just the sun glinting off a rock. Nope, looked like gold from all angles. So I popped down in the hole, scraped away the dirt with my fingers, and found this.



A beautiful little bird charm! I can't see a maker's mark or anything, and the back is pretty cruddy after washing, but that front is gold. There's no doubt in my mind that anything that has been in an iron-infested pit for 150 years and comes out looking like that is gold. But I'm just excited that it's intact! I did have to bend the tail back straight (very carefully), and there may have been a beak on it at one time, but it's intact. The little wire loop it hung from is still intact as well and moves freely. (The hanging loop looks like either copper or brass.). I'm guessing since the hanging loop is at the bottom, this was a charm or bracelet ornament or something rather than a pendant, but who knows?

At any rate, it's very cool, and very exciting to find something in that hole that isn't iron. I am thankful for the little bit of rain that washed the dirt off enough to see it, or I might well have missed it, or damaged it with a digger. Very cool.

Here's the cruddy back side, Not much to see, but in the interest of completeness, here it is. That "spot" in the middle is a raised spot of crud that doesn't want to come off, and I didn't want to get too aggressive with it.

 

[robertk]

Here's a (maybe) better photo of the front of the bird. Better lighting and a better camera, anyway.

 

[robertk]

Yesterday I looked at LIDAR images of the home site. They didn't actually show the two holes that I know are there (I'm digging them), nor does it show any recognizable disturbance where the house would have been. It does show a rectangular disturbance some distance away from the area I've been hunting, so I checked that out yesterday. Just like in the main area, there are a lot of iron signals there, so it was something. But there are two rather large cedar trees growing there now, so it would be difficult to work that area much.

I did check what seemed like a good path from the new area back to the main area, and found several random iron bits, a nice well-worn horseshoe, a small bullet, and this thing. It's just over 2" long and 1" across. It's iron, square, with rounded edges, a circular cutout in one end, tapered at the other, with a little "nub" on one side. Any ideas what it was?

Front, side, and back views:

 

[Groundhogg]

I have no clue what it is but I'm diggin' the journal. Also amazed with your persistence.

 

[robertk]

Last night I widened the cellar hole (as usual, one rock at a time) so it is now wide enough to comfortably stand in while working. It's about waist deep now, and I'm still not at the bottom because I'm standing on wire and other metal bits. There are two pieces of what looks like stove pipe partly exposed now, but I have to remove more rocks and dirt to get to them.

Finds last night, among the rocks:



That massive round thing at the bottom weighs several pounds. I think it's another cast iron stove part? The ceramic fragment at the top right seems like part of a fancy plate (the edge was "wavy", not perfectly round).

The black things at the upper left look like parts of a shoe to me. I am surprised leather lasted that long in the ground.


And those bottle fragments at the lower right have writing on them, but it wasn't enough for me to identify it. It's undoubtedly a patent number, which would be great, but it's missing part of it, so that's kinda hard to look up.


Still having fun, never knowing what's under the next rock...

 

[robertk]

I'm mostly pulling rocks out of the cellar hole lately. That and barbed wire, lots of rusty barbed wire. Last night I pulled out what looked like a section of stove pipe, maybe. It was empty inside (even in the ground, it was not full or dirt or rock). It stayed together just long enough to take a picture and then when I moved it again, it fell apart.


Also found a few bottle bits and a couple of pieces of ceramic. The large bottle bit is neat -- I'm guessing it's old and hand blown. There are no markings on the bottom, and I can see a few bubbles in the glass.


I also found another new shot shell headstamp. This one is an "Indian" 12 gauge by RHA CO. A search says this was made between 1898 and 1906, which makes it the newest identifiable thing to have come out of that hole so far.


I also found this unidentified iron object the other day. It has a nail in one side, and a hole in the other side where a nail would have been. It does not hinge, and shows no obvious signs of wear. It's about an inch wide, fairly heavy, about 10" long, about 6 or 7" across the big loop. I have no clue what it is. I also posted on the "What is it" forum, but haven't had a solution there yet either.


So mostly just junk, but still interesting junk. And I'm still not at the bottom....

 

[robertk]

I didn't dig any yesterday -- it rained all day, we got nearly two inches total (which we really needed), and I didn't want to be covered in mud.

But my wife noticed this laying on top of the ground near where I've been piling dirt. Unfortunately I don't know if it came from the surface layers or the deeper layers. I'm going to guess surface layers, since this is newer than anything else out of either hole.



It's hard to read, but it says "PETERS" on top, "H.V." on the bottom, "12" on the right side, and "MADE IN USA" on the left. The company was in business from 1887 to 1934, when Remington bought them out. But this particular style was made from 1915 to 1927, and the "made in USA" says it's one of the newer ones. Given that everything else I've pulled out of that hole has been 1880's, I imagine this was dropped after the hole had long since been filled in, so must have been near the surface and I just missed it while moving dirt.

 

[robertk]

Remember that piece of leather I found on Monday that looked like part of a shoe? Well, it was. I found the rest of it last night under a big rock. I managed to get it out mostly intact, but it started falling apart the more I moved it. (I'm beginning to appreciate how tedious archaeology must be). Here it is last night's part just out of the ground, then reunited with the piece from Monday.



It's fairly small and narrow. I'm guessing it was a woman's shoe. The sole is multiple layers of leather stacked and sewn together, and the top was a single layer of leather. Perhaps this is one of the shoes that was polished from the Bixby bottle that I found the bottom of. I am really amazed that it survived over a century in the ground. Bixby's must have been some powerful stuff.

 

[robertk]

I checked the dirt piles I had removed from the hole last night just in case I had missed something. Still tons of iron in there, despite me removing as much as I could find. Didn't find anything in the piles, so I just went ahead an swung the coil over the yard for a few minutes. Found two new shot shell headstamps, one fired bullet (that had hit something), and one brass rivet. The Western headstamp could be as old as 1898, the REM UMC one is newer, 1920's probably. No clue on the rivet or fired bullet. I'm getting a pretty good collection of headstamps going.

 

[LandSeig]

I’m really enjoying your story. Keep it coming!

 

[robertk]

We have finally been getting some rain, so it has been a couple of days since I've been out. Last night's cellar hole expansion found the usual "interesting junk".



Several pieces of a large ceramic crock, some random broken glass and bottle bits, a piece of metal that maybe isn't iron, and a buckle or clip of some sort that fell off a larger metal thing that I haven't managed to unearth yet. There's also this guy:



I'm going to guess this was a candle holder. It's unfortunate that it isn't intact, but then I guess it's to be expected -- if it were intact, they probably wouldn't have thrown it in to fill in the cellar. No identifying marks or anything, but it looks about the right size to have held a candle. The base isn't perfectly flat, so it's hard to say if this was a single candle holder, or broken off a larger one that held multiple.

Like my wife says, just enough interesting stuff to make you want to keep digging.

 

[robertk]

Another night in the iron mines...

I found a few more bits of glass, including the top and bottom of a blue mason jar, but the sides are all missing. And of course more barbed wire and sheet metal. But I also found what I believe to be the door of the cookstove. It's pretty cool. I'm going to soak it in Evaporust and see if I can clean it up. Perhaps I'll find enough pieces to put it back together eventually.