186 Year Old Silver! Colonial Flintlock Frizzen! Discovery Of Colonial Cabin Site, NC

[FoundInNC]

I bought a new house, built in 1937, with 11 acres a year and a half ago. I detected the yard and found some early 1900s relics but nothing older. I had a visitor about three weeks ago of an 84 year old man that grew up in this house! He was talking about growing up on the farm and told me there was an old Indian cemetery behind my house. While trying to figure out where exactly the old cemetery was, the old man said that it was between the feed barn and the old chimney. The feed barn is still standing, but the chimney I had never seen. I promptly asked him what chimney he was speaking of. He replied that when he was a kid there was a chimney in the middle of the field and they would always plow around it. He said that his father had him and his brothers remove the rocks when he was very young. I got to thinking and something clicked....I remembered a ford (rock crossing)across the little creek in the edge of the field the man was referring to. I remember the first time I saw them thinking of how wild it was that the large square rocks were in the creek. They were huge and had been there for years. I assumed that they were moved from the site of an old log home, likely from a nearby location.

I finally got to go search for this mystery cabin site today. I started detecting down by the creek that the rocks are in, and moved around the perimeter of the nine acre field, digging all ferrous targets. After two hours I dug a nail, a hand forged nail! I then found myself In a bed of iron approximately 100'x100'. There were targets everywhere. I was digging old cast iron and hand forged nails by the pocketfuls. Once I pinned down the location of where the home was likely at, I shut my iron off on my AT-Pro. I was so excited to have finally found this long lost homesite! Within ten minutes of detecting with iron muted, I had a repeatable tone near the surface of the ground. I quickly and carefully dug it, and it was a flat brass item that initially looked like a flat button. After cleaning it off, I realized it was a top to a spoon handle WITH an engraved name letter! I hope this helps me identify something about the family that lived in the cabin. I had just put my phone away from taking pictures when I got another repeatable tone on my AT-Pro. Knowing that I was definitely on a possible colonial cabin site, I carefully dug a hole. As soon as I flipped the grass plug over, a saw a round silver coin!!! IT WAS AN 1830 CAPPED BUST DIME!!!!! It appears to be a high grade, maybe someone here knows!!! This is actually my third capped bust dime. The others were nice but not this nice!!! (See my banner finds)

I made a video of the reveal and took lots of pictures. After cleaning up some of the iron, I realized that I had dug a flintlock musket FRIZZEN and a very old round wood chisel! There were also some pieces of hand forged door handles and door hinges in my iron pile. I can't wait to get back out to this site! Stay tuned! I am one happy digger!!! Good research pays off!!!


Beautiful 1830 capped bust dime

This is the spoon handle piece.

This is the flintlock musket frizzen.



Here is the chisel.

Iron finds

Creek crossing with the cabin chimney stones!

Picture showing the size of the field

Below is the actual site. Interesting how broomstraw did not grow where the home stood.

Below: chimney stones used as a ford for small creek

 

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[DeepseekerADS]

You've a great site there, and congratulations on the dime! You'll be patiently searching there for years to come. As stated above, just continue clearing out the iron, etc. Another dream find may await you. Patience Grasshopper! (courtesy of the old Kung Fu TV series from the early 70's

 

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[against the wind]

Beautiful coin,
That site would keep me busy for years.
Congratulations

 

[treblehunter]

I love your dime, it is on my to find list, congrats on being able to talk with that old gentleman. My best info has always come from talking with people.

 

[terpfan]

I've always dreamed about living on a site with its own diggable history. That capped dime is really special. Congrats on your finds and good luck finding more in the coming year.

 

[ecmo]

FoundinNC read your post again and got me to thinking. After you can no longer detect finds you could have a farmer work up the field thus possibly bringing up new finds and if you're an Indian artifact hunter that would expose these also. After that it could be planted in a hay crop, such as clover or lespedesa(shareing in $ harvest) these attract deer also if you're a hunter. As someone else mentioned that field could keep you occupied for years. Good luck and HH.

macro racer 2, Whites mx5, trx pinpointer

 

[huntsman53]

Wow! Excellent hunt and you have a killer site on your own property now. That frizzen would look awesome after electrolysis. You might want to consider building a sifter and excavating 10' sections down a couple feet to remove all the nails and unmask lots of non-ferrous. I have had incredible success doing that the last couple years. Looking forward to your next post.

I agree totally on this advice! Once you have removed all the nails, other ferrous pieces and who knows what else near the surface, some really great finds will be possible once you turn the Iron Masking off on your' metal detector. While plowing and discing the field would likely bring some items closer to or to the surface and make it much easier to sift and dig, one would run the risk of damaging some items that were not damaged before with past plowing.


Frank

 

[huntsman53]

A bell went off in my' head and I looked up Mebane, NC to see if it is in the Carolina Slate/Gold Belt and it actually is or on the Eastern edges where a lot of Gold that eroded out, went to. You might want to try some Gold panning in the creek in the pics and any other creeks/streams on the property to see if the property has Gold. If it does, there may be more on the property and not just in the streams.


Frank

 

[Carolina Tom]

Congrats on the nice capped coin. Wow, what a beauty.

Best of luck on what looks like a great site!

 

[huntsman53]

I agree totally on this advice! Once you have removed all the nails, other ferrous pieces and who knows what else near the surface, some really great finds will be possible once you turn the Iron Masking off on your' metal detector. While plowing and discing the field would likely bring some items closer to or to the surface and make it much easier to sift and dig, one would run the risk of damaging some items that were not damaged before with past plowing.


Frank

I got to thinking that if I did not live close to three hundred miles from your location, I would loan you my' 4-tier sifter. The sifter has 4 different sized screens and has a 4 legged stand to hold the screens in place with one stacked on top of the other but separated by about 4 to 6 inches. Each sifter can be adjusted to different angles from level up to about 45 degrees and more holes could be drilled to lessen or increase the angle of the screens. I have used it at the Crater of Diamonds State Park searching for Diamonds but the oily soil there due to all of the Kimberlite and brought up by the volcanic activity, clogs the sifters. I also used it at the Ray Micah Mine outside of Burnsville, NC and it worked great for sifting tailing piles for finding Aquamarine and other forms of Beryl. A friend and myself brought back close to 5 pounds of Aquamarine, Goshenite and a few cloudy Morganite specimens from there some 15 years ago.


Frank