French & Indian War, Rev War, The Diggers, and Disaster!!

[Steve in PA]

French & Indian War Relics, Rev War Relics, The Diggers, and Disaster!!

I have been out to several places recently In search of French & Indian War, Rev War, and Whiskey Rebellion relics. I’ll start with the earliest stuff and work my way up.

These relics are from a French & Indian War Encampment that a couple of us have tried to find for a while. Some sources said it was obliterated by strip mining. My friend Jim finally stumbled into it recently, and invited me to hunt with him since we were actually within a hundred yards of it once.



I managed to eyeball a nice gunflint which looks beautiful against the sun



Here are a couple .69 caliber Brown Bess Musket Balls



I also found a toasted King George II, which are always fun to find, even in this condition.



The next place was a fort used during the Rev War, primarily for protection from raiding Indian parties. I had known about this place for 20 years, but only recently decided to check it out. The property owners said there have been 10 – 15 people there in the last 6 years, including the Diggers TV show. Still I was able to find a few things – including three tombac buttons, a saddle strap guide escutcheon, some musketballs and a piece of colonial silver.



We are always searching for what those who went before us left behind.
This is an exception to that rule



I also spent some time Saturday looking for a Whiskey Rebellion encampment which turned into a disaster for me, since all I ended up with was a bad case of poison ivy!

During the course of looking for old stuff, newer stuff will inevitably appear. One of the dimes is a 1949-S, which is the second lowest mintage of the series, but still not worth much.



Finally, on the plus side I did cash in my copper, brass, and lead scrap over the weekend and collected a crisp new Benji $$



Thanks for looking and good luck out there!

 

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[pa-dirt_nc-sand]

You have great skill at finding the real old dirt in W PA. Looks like a series of very successful hunts. The KG is always cool to find on the far side of PA. And the big musket balls confirm your research.

I don't want to hear about poison ivy yet, you must have gotten into some vines or roots. The ticks are tuff enough this year to start thinking about poison ivy or eventually the mosquitos.

Congrats on your recoveries, nice additions to your collection!

 

[Hawks88]

You got some nice finds there. Congrats!

 

[Rick (Nova Scotia)]

I like how the scrap adds up.

 

[Relicific]

Nice bunch of finds

 

[Steve in PA]

You have great skill at finding the real old dirt in W PA. Looks like a series of very successful hunts. The KG is always cool to find on the far side of PA. And the big musket balls confirm your research.

I don't want to hear about poison ivy yet, you must have gotten into some vines or roots. The ticks are tuff enough this year to start thinking about poison ivy or eventually the mosquitos.

Congrats on your recoveries, nice additions to your collection!

I must have dug into vines & roots, but I have no idea how it penetrated two long sleeved shirts On top of that I wore the same shirts when I went out Sunday!!

 

[billpa]

Nice finds you dug there.Sounds like a great place to hunt.

 

[smokeythecat]

You did very, very well.

 

[sutphin]

OLE GEORGE LOOKS KINDA ROUGH, NICE FINDS

 

[HighVDI]

Great finds Steve. Congrats!

 

[SC Keith]

Enjoyed the post Steve! Congrats on getting into the French and Indian site you have been seeking. I bet it was a great feeling to be finally digging on that site. The .69 cal balls are cool finds too.
Getting cash for that scrap was nice!

 

[ToddsPoint]

Go to the pharmacy and buy a bottle of Tec-Nu. Wash gently but repeatedly with the stuff and you can remove it. I've used it many times and it's a life saver. There are 4 species of poison ivy type plants in the US. Poison ivy, and poison oak. There is an eastern version of those two and a western version also. The western stuff is the worst. The Tec-Nu works good on the eastern but not so good on the western. Gary

 

[treblehunter]

Good job, nice finds, I like that flint

 

[Trezurehunter]

Those are some very nice finds. The scrap metal does add up.

 

[Phishfarmer]

Nice finds. I keep my eye open for flints but have never found one. I find arrowheads fairly regularly; they are often white flint in my neck of the woods so they stick out nice.. or maybe I ONLY see the white ones. hmmm

Your salvage receipt is a note for us all; we dig it up anyway.. might as well get paid for it. No matter what we use it will eventually wear out or become obsolete. We have a fortunate hobby in that it pays for itself- (financially some) and greatly from satisfaction. I dug up a large abandoned copper cable a while back that I had to leave. There had to be hundreds of pounds of it. I didn't have anything to cut it with and it was too heavy to carry through the steep terrain. Maybe I need to take some cutters with me next time.

 

[Calabash Digger]

Nice! Great research on you guys part too.

 

[CMDiamonddawg]

Atta boy Steve , ya done good ! Well almost , the poison ivy is no fun , plenty of calamine .

 

[washingtonian]

Nice finds!!

 

[Steve in PA]

Nice finds. I keep my eye open for flints but have never found one. I find arrowheads fairly regularly; they are often white flint in my neck of the woods so they stick out nice.. or maybe I ONLY see the white ones. hmmm

Your salvage receipt is a note for us all; we dig it up anyway.. might as well get paid for it. No matter what we use it will eventually wear out or become obsolete. We have a fortunate hobby in that it pays for itself- (financially some) and greatly from satisfaction. I dug up a large abandoned copper cable a while back that I had to leave. There had to be hundreds of pounds of it. I didn't have anything to cut it with and it was too heavy to carry through the steep terrain. Maybe I need to take some cutters with me next time.

If you are hunting Civil War sites in the Petersburg area, you are unlikely to find a gun flint. Although some confederates carried flintlocks early in the war, they were long gone by the Petersburg campaign. However, you will have a better change of finding one in a Rev War site down toward Yorktown. Yes, white quartz seems to be the primary lithic material for arrowheads in the coastal mid Atlantic area. You sometimes see a brownish quartz material here in SW PA, but we mainly see different grades of chert and some Flint Ridge material from Ohio.