Need advice on searching around my 1835 family plantation home that burned down

[bignadad]

Alright i'm posting here to hopefully get a little insight or direction to where im currently at in my metal detecting. Any advice is very much appreciated.

My and a friend have gotten really involved in metal detecting/treasure hunting in the past year. Our tools now include a Garrett AT Gold, Whites Coinmaster Pro, 2 whites Bullseye II Pinpointers, and specialty shovels.

I live on a property that i grew up on and have about 200 acres of land (in South Carolina) that my father owns. On this land used to stand the house that i grew up in. This is why i got so interested in all of this. My home was built in 1835 and burned down in 2009. It was a very sad day to see that house go up in flames here are a few images of that.

Well, i actually did the cleanup of the house with my backhoe and tractor and a dug a HUGE hole and buried it off the back yard. Had i been more into it at the time i would have taken more time to sift through everything. But I did not take much time to do that. I basically just got the job done.

Well I just want to see if anyone can offer any kind of tips or pointers or if anything stands out anyone that might spark something or somewhere to dig.

When I first started the cleanup i KNEW something had to be under those chimneys. And, i was right. under the chimney pictured below, all the way under the foundation stones on the left i found a old leather pouch with 2 confederate bills and some old coins (also pictured below)

Well to say the least i got very excited about doing more digging. But really didnt start until a year ago getting heavy into it.

Here is the house after the cleanup

So i have this old plantation home and so many places to dig. Me and my friend have spent quite a few hours and have found not too much that have been worth finding. We have found probably 50 pennies (5 of them wheat), a buffalo nickel and an indian head penny. We have also found other things but not really valuable. I will post pictures of some of those finds in post 3

Well one thing i started out doing since i had a backhoe at my disposal was digging trenches and digging from the side instead of from the top. This was before i had the metal detector. I ended up finding a few trash piles but nothing of value. Is there any good to doing it this way? or is it just wasted time? here are some pics of how i was doing it

There was a story of one of the previous owners burying money around the property. that is what im looking for!
I even went to the courthouse to try and trace back the original owner and how it got passed down. I was actually successful in finding who built the house and every owner since then.

Alfred Scarborough built the house in 1835
*Not sure of the activity between these 2*
LL Baker purchased in 1919 and sold the following month to EH Hearon
Then is seems the Bank took? is from him and RH Hudson purchased it in 1936
In 1971 John Herndon purchased it and he was actually the father of Mark Herndon which is the drummer for county group Alabama
Then finally my father purchased it in 1978

I tell you all that just to give an idea how the home came about over the years. It was a large plantation home and thats why i believe there has to be some treasures out there somewhere.

There is also a church down the road that Alfred Scarborough gave the land to. It was built in 183?. I even got permission to search there but it came up VERY short. found one wheat penny and about 20 budwieser cans. I couldn't believe so many beer cans on church property. Did not have much luck at all like i thought we would

So im going to post some pics before the fire just to see if anyone has any suggestions on where i could maybe search for something new. i feel like im hitting a wall. We have scoured that property for the most part and just want to see what we should do next.

One bad thing that right where the house stood there is a ton of melted metal and things. So metal detecting there is very hard. We keep finding the clomps of metal that register high on our detectors.

Places i have searched pretty well is the front yard and around old trees

I will post pics of the house before fire in the next post

Any advice is greatly appreciated! I will continue to use this forum in the future.

 

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[bignadad]

 

[bignadad]

Pictures of past treasure found

 

[bignadad]

Reserving more more

 

[bignadad]

Oh here is a transposed map of my property.

I took a land plat from courthouse that was dated 1935 and transposed it on a google earth map

My house was located to the right of the purple colored pond.

Here is an interesting image of the congregation from the church down the road. it was taken in 1899

 

[racer117]

Nice finds there.I think with all of the molten metal and the fact that you buried everything pretty much leaves out metal detecting.If you still own the property and have access to a bobcat or other machine,I would possibly scrape off a few inches of the land and sift it. It may take awhile,but if your into it,why not do it.

 

[Eric Wilson]

Ok, I left some tips for you at the other area you posted but seeing this gives me some more thoughts. Definitely need to address area of molten material at some point. Remove top 8-10 inches and sift is probably best- then detect. What detectors are ya'll using? Another thing is I would go back to that chimney and scan the walls with detector, and check walls for loose areas where paper currency might be secreted. Careful it doesn't collapse on you. All the previous advice I gave you still applied but 200 acres changes some things too. I searched a plantation about half that big outside charleston and you wouldn't believe how far away from the house we found isolated pockets of stuff, couple of coins lots of lead and some bullets. You couldn't infer from the land that there had been activity there- too much had changed. Around big live oaks is often good because people sought shade. I would do a randomized search further away from house for one day- don't dig hits but insert red flags. Point is to try to identify other areas of human activity. Then come back another day and work the flagged areas. As to possible caches Civil War or otherwise-they say that misers- the 50's guy probably qualifies- bury their money where they can keep an eye on it, that is within eyesight of house. I'm not entirely sure that I agree with that but I do believe that they bury it somewhere that is familiar to them that they believe at least they can find again easily. I would look for distinctive land features, very large old trees or stumps there of, rock formations, high ground, anything distinctive. A civil war cache is more problematic if it exists. One probably buried deeper, not meant for rapid recovery like miser's cache but for long term secretion from Yankees. Misers often like to check on their money, count it etc., so more likely to be in more obvious place and shallower to allow ease of verification. Would the owner's in civil war times have had the means to have family silver items, gold, jewelry, coinage, etc. more research would be in order here. You can't bury what you don't have. Land rich and cash poor is not a new condition in the South. If they were rich enough, did the head of household serve in the war? If so probably more likely to have cached and cached well as he would have anticipated being gone for awhile. If he served, did he survive the war? If not, any cache probably still there. If he didn't serve but had wealth, how close did Sherman or other factions of Northern army encroach. The closer they came the more likely he is to have panicked and buried in less thought out location- somewhere more obvious and not as deep. You still will need something like a Gemini 3 2 box or a good pulse induction machine with the largest coil you can get. By their very nature caches are meant to be deeper. Also something else, try to find the privy site. Not only a potential source of great bottles, buttons, coins, etc. but also wouldn't be first time someone hid valuables there- after all who wants to go through that when it's fresh? Some people may ask why a cache might still be there if owner returned from war or didn't serve. Don't forget reconstruction. It would probably not have been safe for some time to exhibit much wealth. Probably subject to confiscation, legal or otherwise, so remain buried. Time passes, memories fade, health dissipates, caches lie fallow and forgotten. The leather pouch was obviously a cache. That may bode well for more though it tends to not bode well for large ones as it is so small.

 

[bignadad]

Ok, I left some tips for you at the other area you posted but seeing this gives me some more thoughts. Definitely need to address area of molten material at some point. Remove top 8-10 inches and sift is probably best- then detect. What detectors are ya'll using? Another thing is I would go back to that chimney and scan the walls with detector, and check walls for loose areas where paper currency might be secreted. Careful it doesn't collapse on you. All the previous advice I gave you still applied but 200 acres changes some things too. I searched a plantation about half that big outside charleston and you wouldn't believe how far away from the house we found isolated pockets of stuff, couple of coins lots of lead and some bullets. You couldn't infer from the land that there had been activity there- too much had changed. Around big live oaks is often good because people sought shade. I would do a randomized search further away from house for one day- don't dig hits but insert red flags. Point is to try to identify other areas of human activity. Then come back another day and work the flagged areas. As to possible caches Civil War or otherwise-they say that misers- the 50's guy probably qualifies- bury their money where they can keep an eye on it, that is within eyesight of house. I'm not entirely sure that I agree with that but I do believe that they bury it somewhere that is familiar to them that they believe at least they can find again easily. I would look for distinctive land features, very large old trees or stumps there of, rock formations, high ground, anything distinctive. A civil war cache is more problematic if it exists. One probably buried deeper, not meant for rapid recovery like miser's cache but for long term secretion from Yankees. Misers often like to check on their money, count it etc., so more likely to be in more obvious place and shallower to allow ease of verification. Would the owner's in civil war times have had the means to have family silver items, gold, jewelry, coinage, etc. more research would be in order here. You can't bury what you don't have. Land rich and cash poor is not a new condition in the South. If they were rich enough, did the head of household serve in the war? If so probably more likely to have cached and cached well as he would have anticipated being gone for awhile. If he served, did he survive the war? If not, any cache probably still there. If he didn't serve but had wealth, how close did Sherman or other factions of Northern army encroach. The closer they came the more likely he is to have panicked and buried in less thought out location- somewhere more obvious and not as deep. You still will need something like a Gemini 3 2 box or a good pulse induction machine with the largest coil you can get. By their very nature caches are meant to be deeper. Also something else, try to find the privy site. Not only a potential source of great bottles, buttons, coins, etc. but also wouldn't be first time someone hid valuables there- after all who wants to go through that when it's fresh? Some people may ask why a cache might still be there if owner returned from war or didn't serve. Don't forget reconstruction. It would probably not have been safe for some time to exhibit much wealth. Probably subject to confiscation, legal or otherwise, so remain buried. Time passes, memories fade, health dissipates, caches lie fallow and forgotten. The leather pouch was obviously a cache. That may bode well for more though it tends to not bode well for large ones as it is so small.

Thank you again for you detailed comments. Im going to study over them again and again to make sure i dont miss anything.

What i do know is that Major Addison Scarborough, born in Southampton County, Virginia, moved to NC when he as four. He held his rank of Major while in NC. Sometime after that he moved to Bishopville, SC.
Scarborough

He was the first Scarborough to move here. He had a large plantation and died on it (according to that site). I have done much research and found out where his home was, but contacted the land owner and he was VERY short with me. I explained to him I was recovering artifacts from the early Scarborough's and would love to try and find some artifacts on his land and he said bluntly "No Sir!". I said so that means we cannot? He said "No Sir, have a good day"

Anyways on that site above it says "Addison deeded 200 acres of his 700+ acre plantation to son Henry."
700 acres was a large plantation in my mind.

His son Henry was deeded 200 acres of that, and im pretty sure i have located it as well.

I took the 1825 Mills atlas map and overlayed it on google earth but they dont line up like i thought they should. Im guessing the mills atlas was not that exact?

So from there Henry's son Alfred was apparently the one who built our house and owned all the land around it. I have went to the court house to find out this for sure but it was hard to nail down. I did find that Alfred deeded some acreage to Bethany Baptist Church and that is right across the street from where the house stood. This is why i'm assuming Alfred was the one that built the house.

From what i saw Alfred did not go to war. He lived from 1800-1890 and our house was apparently built in 1835. Only reason i know that is because a old plaque on the front of our house said it. So im just assuming
Scarborough

The earliest i was able to trace the house and be sure i had found it in records is 1919 when EH hearon purchased it. I have the plat for it and it matches up perfect.

So thats the history on the house as much as i know it. Ive tried my best to verify things the best i could but it seems hard to find. I wish i could find old pictures of the place but cant. My family moved into the house in 79 and i have pictures from then but nothing earlier than that.

I wish i could find out more about locations of the civil war and sherman's march to see if anything happened around the property but havent been able to come up with anything.

I do know a story about a swamp that was called Scape Whore Swamp, now called Scape 'Ore Swamp, that is kind of interesting. The was at the time of the revolutionary war and that swamp is only a mile away from the house.
http://www2.fiu.edu/~bob/askew/Scape-Whore-Swamp.htm

I like the flag idea and im going to check into that.

Thanks again!