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   | The Relic Hunter | Vol. 34 - Aug. 2000 |
Back In The Woods... Back In Time
By Ed Fedory
 Indian Head cents, Barber silver, Civil War tokens, bells, buttons, and buckles were found on the grounds surrounding the two secluded cellar holes. |
They were a pair of hungry, sodden, muddied souls as they emerged from the narrow trail through the undergrowth. The afternoon showers hadn't dampened either their spirits or their determination, however. Their soaked boots held as little concern for them as did the ticks they occasionally picked from their clothing. They were relic hunters- and the quest for history remained unhindered.
The site from which they were returning had remained untouched for over a century. Nestled on the banks of a swamp and covered with a rich blanket of moss and brush, it had gone unnoticed, save for the small woodland creatures who made their homes in the crumbling foundation stones. More than just a ruin, the site was a time capsule, illuminating riverside life of a century past.
The first time I ever visited the site, I couldn't help asking myself the question, "Who in their right mind would choose to live in such a remote area?" It is a question for which I still haven't found a complete answer... perhaps only a partial one.
 Quite a number of spoons were found on the sites. Most were brass and plated, but a few were cast pewter from generations earlier. |
Part of the answer has to come from the people themselves who lived during that period of history. They didn't ask for much, and they were pretty happy with what little they got. It was a time when common sense was common, but book learning wasn't. It was a time when men lived by their wits and instincts... a time when the prosperity of a family was usually measured by the strength of a back and a pair of arms, coupled with an iron will to survive whatever life could throw in your face.
They lived with disease, and without electricity. Indoor plumbing was a novelty they might have witnessed a couple of times, but didn't feel they needed. And who needed one of those new coal stoves when nature had provided all those old oaks and maples for the fireplace?
Today, our computers are too slow, and our cars just aren't fast enough. It takes too long to get on the internet... vacations are just too short... there are too many commercials on TV... too few electrical outlets in the kitchen... gas prices are always too high, and mortgage rates are never low enough!
 Relic hunter Joe Anderson found the site of several 19th century cellar holes while exploring the edges of a swamp in search of a crystal mine. |
Sometimes it's pretty difficult taking a serious look at ourselves in that 20th century mirror, while attempting to understand history and the people who lived it. They were tough, because they had to be. In some small way, I think relic hunters appreciate the things which have been lost... and they're not always metal, and they're not always dug!
We gained a closeness with the former inhabitants of that lonely cellar hole deep in the woods, and perhaps it was neither as mean, nor as desolate, as when first viewed by modern eyes.
 Old bottles and iron articles, recovered from the depths of the soil, rim the edge of a dug well. Several deep cisterns were also found... hazards all relic hunters should be aware of when searching similar sites! |
After relic hunter Joe Anderson had spent several days clearing the surrounding brush from the site so that we could search the ground carefully, we found there existed a primitive appeal. It was quiet, and the only sounds we could hear were the flights of waterfowl as they descended onto the surface of the swamp. The world of today was very far away... with each recovered target, the door to the world of numerous yesterdays was opened before us!
One of the major difficulties in searching this particular site, despite the fact that Joe had removed a large portion of the dead brush, was the huge amount of iron trash which littered the area surrounding the cellar hole. One sweep of the coil along the surface of the ground produced numerous clicks and chatters, and at times listening "in between" the false signals became a real challenge. It took a little patience and practice, but after a while, it got progressively easier to hear those "round" sounds from deep in the soil. When Joe plucked the first Indian Head cent from the depths of a hole, only to be followed by Charlie's Barber quarter, we had a strong feeling that the site had never seen the use of a metal detector.
One of the interesting items Joe was able to recover during that initial hunt was a big Indian Head. Anyone who has ever relic hunted a site near old railroad tracks knows this type of coin. Years ago, some young boy, in a moment of curiosity, had placed a penny on the tracks... awaited the passing of a local freight... and gone back to the tracks to recover his sorely flattened coin. By holding Joe's recovery in the light, just so, you can still faintly see the Indian peering out from the flattened surface.
 One of the most interesting finds was a pre-Civil War militia officer's belt buckle. The other half is still out there somewhere. |
Initially, we thought it a peculiar find so far away from any of the existing railroad tracks, until we remembered that the old White Elephant Railroad had once passed within several hundred yards of the foundation site. The tracks had been ripped up over a half-century earlier to be sold as scrap, and only the track bed remains to remind us of the White Elephant, along with Joe's coin.
Other evidence of long-removed river history was a remnant of the ice industry that Charlie was able to recover near the stone-lined well-an iron hook and prod once attached to an oak shaft and used to maneuver large chunks of freshly cut river ice so they could be removed from the river by a team of horses. In an agriculturally based community, the river's ice provided income and jobs during the winter months. It's another aspect of our river history which hasn't been witnessed for well over a half century. Slowly, a picture of life along the river 100 years ago was beginning to emerge!
One of the nicest finds on the site was an engraved silver and gold-washed thimble. This obvious gift, given long in the past, went a long way to explain the discrepancy between the total number of targets and the relatively small number of buttons we encountered at the site. Whoever the lady of the house was, she must have taken a great deal of pride in her needlework... no loose buttons there!
 A couple of the interesting items recovered by Joe's hunting partner, Charlie- a large crotal bell inscribed with the manufacturer's initials, and an ice hook and prod from the early ice-cutting industry on the Hudson River. |
The female touch to the site was hard to miss. From the cooking and eating utensils, to the small flowerbeds surrounded by carefully chosen quartzite stones... from the small fragments of a crystal candleholder to a few broken pieces of fine china which must have graced her Sunday table settings, the image of a woman attempting to maintain some sort of urbane civility in the backwoods was easy to picture.
Putting a soft edge to an often too harsh world has always been a gift pioneering women possessed, whether on the long and dusty trails West, or on isolated and lonely frontier settlements. To their undying credit, many a rose has grown where only sagebrush or hemlocks once existed!
While certainly not dating to Colonial times, the site did provide some interesting finds dating to the Civil War era. In what was formerly a small orchard, Charlie was able to recover the first of his Civil War tokens, while Joe pulled half of a pre-Civil War era militia officer's belt buckle from a nearby hole. The search for the other half went on for the better part of the day, but the remainder of the relic continued to elude us.
 It took a true team effort to complete this toy pewter cup and saucer set. Joe found the saucer, while Charlie found the cup. |
With Joe and Charlie often having the same weekdays off, it was not surprising to see them coming out of the woods with an interesting collection of artifacts from the site on late afternoons. On one particular day, Joe produced a couple of tiny pewter saucers from a child's tea set. I don't know exactly what the fascination is, but old toys found in out-of-the-way settings, whether early cellar holes of Colonial fort sites, have always sparked my curiosity. Perhaps it's the teacher in me, or maybe it's just the fact that I wonder about what childhood could have been like in such primitive surrounds. Maybe I just wonder about what type of adults they finally became, and the impact their lives might have had on history. Whatever the thought, I had only one request for Joe: "Now you've got to find the cups."
Twin cups were found the following day by Charlie, not far from where Joe recovered the saucers, beside the quartzite rocks surrounding the mother's flower garden.
As relic hunters there are times when we find objects strongly associated with each other, and they pique our curiosity, provoke a story of times past, or move us in a very personal way. It isn't always a smashed Civil War buckle with a Minie ball still piercing it, or a chewed musketball beside a Revolutionary War button on an encampment site which followed a battle... sometimes it's something far simpler and elementary...
Sometimes history is brought to life by something as simple as a child's tea set beside her mother's garden...
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