SweepNbeep
Full Member
- Mar 3, 2017
- 190
- 294
- Detector(s) used
- Garrett AT Pro & Ace 400
- Primary Interest:
- Other
My daughter wanted to go metal detecting for her 14th birthday, so we headed out to one of our favorite spots. It is an 1880's farmstead, out on the edge of a field. There is nothing left of this place except the metal in the ground. The only reason we know it is there is from the accounts of the old timers. We've been over it so many times now, that it's getting hard to come up with anything noteworthy, but we always seem to manage one good pull so we continue to hunt it. Eventually I swept over this and my daughter dug it up and pin pointed it. I'd never heard of or seen one before. She looked it up, and it turned out to be a button from The Grand Army of the Republic.
According to Wikipedia "The "Grand Army of the Republic" (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army (United States Army), Union Navy (U.S. Navy), Marines and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service who served in the American Civil War for the Northern/Federal forces. Founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, and growing to include hundreds of posts (local community units) across the nation, (predominately in the North, but also a few in the South and West), it was dissolved in 1956 when its last member, Albert Woolson (1850—1956) of Duluth, Minnesota, died."
Anyway, we were pretty happy with it, and it turned into a nice little history lesson, as detecting often does. Thanks for looking.
According to Wikipedia "The "Grand Army of the Republic" (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army (United States Army), Union Navy (U.S. Navy), Marines and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service who served in the American Civil War for the Northern/Federal forces. Founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, and growing to include hundreds of posts (local community units) across the nation, (predominately in the North, but also a few in the South and West), it was dissolved in 1956 when its last member, Albert Woolson (1850—1956) of Duluth, Minnesota, died."
Anyway, we were pretty happy with it, and it turned into a nice little history lesson, as detecting often does. Thanks for looking.
Upvote
27
This hobby does get you into exploring the history around the areas you hunt. I talk to a man weekly who has extensive historical knowledge of our town. I tried to find where a park was, its name was in a lot of articles in old newspapers. Came up empty. Asked him one day and he said "Oh yeah that's where the VFW post is now. Everyone used to picnic there." He then gave me the lowdown on a few places to hunt. 
