Date this firehose brass fitting

NicksRelics

Jr. Member
Feb 11, 2021
24
19
Southeast Texas
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Equinox 800
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Well yall I made it back out to the ghost sawmill town today (1881-1912). I detected this hunk of dirt which I later found was a brass firehose fitting with the 2 nipples knocked off.

I spent a little while searching the web but didn't come up with much.

A few thoughts on the town.

This was a bustling little sawmill town from 1881-1912 when the timber ran out and the buildings were removed or torn down. I'm told it was about 700 people at its peak. There were vineyards (unusual for this area) and surprisingly beautiful homes (this place is just raw forest now-hard to think of it like in the pictures). Its now all old growth (second growth) forest. Some of the property was used for ag stuff at the local highschool in the 1960s or so I'm told, but I have found no glass newer than 1910, no relics newer than 1910 and there is literally nothing left to show there was a town here other than the cemetery. There are a few ruins of brick and concrete foundations where the sawmill was. The entire area seeme to have been bulldozed about 80 years ago, and then left to grow.

I have found a dozen or so late 1800s relics here lately, the latest being the brass beam from an antique platform scale.

This town didnt have and the area still doesnt have any water facilities, its literally forest land in a hunting club.

So for this to be here, it wouldve had to be from a firetruck, or one of those hand cart firehose operations.

Sawmills burnt often. Having access to some sort of pump wouldve been priority to these folks.

Could this be a town period piece or is it something newer? My guess is it's definitely from that town.
 

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Fat

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Oct 22, 2020
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Nebraska panhandle/NE Colorado
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What powered the mill? I would guess steam engine. It would have used a lot of water. I would bet some sort of water tanker hose to fill the boiler tank.
 

OP
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NicksRelics

Jr. Member
Feb 11, 2021
24
19
Southeast Texas
Detector(s) used
Equinox 800
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Yes, it was a steam driven log carriage. State of the art for the day lol
 

FloridaSon

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Sep 29, 2018
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Between Half Reale Beach and Nuestra Seflora de La
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there are clues. One is the rubber seen inside the woven hose jacket. that happened after vulcanization was invented and is searchable. Another is how many threads per inch, in the 1900s all hose threads became standard. Are there any number stamped on the coupling? When hose was tested at some point the coupling was stamped with a number to track it. These are brass which was replaced by the lightweight couplings. All this is scattered around and has to be searched piece by piece. You might google any nearby fire truck museums or collector forums. HH
 

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