UnderMiner
Silver Member
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2014
- Messages
- 3,936
- Reaction score
- 10,298
- Golden Thread
- 2
- Location
- New York City
- 🥇 Banner finds
- 2
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Excalibur II, Equinox 800
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Went out today looking to perform some amateur archeology. The day did not disappoint. I went to a site I found last year while researching NYC street survey maps from the turn of the 20th century. This location was filled with landfill between 1900-1910 to make a street. Part of the landfill has begun being eroded away by the tides and exposing treasures from the period below. Everything burried under this semi-under water site dates to 1910 or older! It's really amazing!
This is one of the first things I found. It's difficult to see but it's a horse's skull completely encased in thick clay. I excavated the skull and was able to reconstruct it later at home. It's about 75% complete.
We here at the Underminer household have determined through dental examination and other forensic indicators that this horse was between 20 and 30 years old when he died. He was definitely a domestic work horse as he has wear on his teeth from where a bit rubbed up against them. At some point he broke the upper rear most tooth on the left side of his mouth probably from accidentally chewing a small stone. He died no later than 1910, his body was likely abandoned in the street, a common practice for the day, subsequently it was collected by NYC sanitation who dumped him in the landfill so they could build the new street on top. Given his approximate age of 20-30 he was probably born some time between 1880-1890 and would have served his best years still walking streets made of paving stones and pulling wagons and carriages with kerosene lanterns. An old cowboy may have even once rode him in his younger years.
Here's a picture of Mr. Horse about to drink some Frank Thurm beer. I found the 110 year old beer bottle close to his skull. The beer bottle was made at 1151 Stebins Ave, a small two block street where the address inscribed on the bottle still exists but is now a private residence. I bet the horse rode past the brewery a few times in his life when it was still around.
Here is the full collection of period bottles I found, four blob-top beer bottles, plus some other little embossed bottles. This is an unprecedented number blob-top bottles, I normally only find one or two if I'm really lucky, never four, it was truly a lucky day.
Here's the same bottles cleaned up (plus a unique dairy jug I found from the same dig)
The beer bottles are from the following companies: The Ebling Brewing Company, Frank Thurm, David Stevenson Brewing Company, and Kellerman's Bottling Works.
The only company I could find any indepth historical information on was the David Stevenson Brewing Company.
It started in 1851 in Manhattan. The owner, David Stevenson died in 1886 leaving the business to his son David Stevenson Jr. who died just 6 years later in 1892. The comapy went on to be run by outside investors after that, and they did very well, by 1902 they produced nearly 140,000 barrels of beer per year. The company went out of buisness along with most other breweries in 1920 when prohibition went into effect. It was located on 40th Street and 10th Ave.
The Ebling beer bottle emerging from the landfill through the process of tidal erosion. For the first time in 110 years it sees daylight after being encased in clay.
5th Ave NYC in 1905 when our horse would have been working. Note the presence of the one lone automobile, can you see it in that sea of horse-drawn carriages?
An older imagine when our horse would have been in the prime of his youth.
This image was taken by photographer Joseph Byron some time between 1900-1906 in NYC. The image is titled "Close of a Career in New York". It depicts an old work horse dead on the street where some children are playing in the gutter. Our horse would have been old but still working rhe same streets when this picture was taken. He likely experienced the same fate as this image depicts. It's sad. They were probably the last generation of working horses before automobiles took over.
That's all for now.
This is one of the first things I found. It's difficult to see but it's a horse's skull completely encased in thick clay. I excavated the skull and was able to reconstruct it later at home. It's about 75% complete.
We here at the Underminer household have determined through dental examination and other forensic indicators that this horse was between 20 and 30 years old when he died. He was definitely a domestic work horse as he has wear on his teeth from where a bit rubbed up against them. At some point he broke the upper rear most tooth on the left side of his mouth probably from accidentally chewing a small stone. He died no later than 1910, his body was likely abandoned in the street, a common practice for the day, subsequently it was collected by NYC sanitation who dumped him in the landfill so they could build the new street on top. Given his approximate age of 20-30 he was probably born some time between 1880-1890 and would have served his best years still walking streets made of paving stones and pulling wagons and carriages with kerosene lanterns. An old cowboy may have even once rode him in his younger years.
Here's a picture of Mr. Horse about to drink some Frank Thurm beer. I found the 110 year old beer bottle close to his skull. The beer bottle was made at 1151 Stebins Ave, a small two block street where the address inscribed on the bottle still exists but is now a private residence. I bet the horse rode past the brewery a few times in his life when it was still around.
Here is the full collection of period bottles I found, four blob-top beer bottles, plus some other little embossed bottles. This is an unprecedented number blob-top bottles, I normally only find one or two if I'm really lucky, never four, it was truly a lucky day.
Here's the same bottles cleaned up (plus a unique dairy jug I found from the same dig)
The beer bottles are from the following companies: The Ebling Brewing Company, Frank Thurm, David Stevenson Brewing Company, and Kellerman's Bottling Works.
The only company I could find any indepth historical information on was the David Stevenson Brewing Company.
It started in 1851 in Manhattan. The owner, David Stevenson died in 1886 leaving the business to his son David Stevenson Jr. who died just 6 years later in 1892. The comapy went on to be run by outside investors after that, and they did very well, by 1902 they produced nearly 140,000 barrels of beer per year. The company went out of buisness along with most other breweries in 1920 when prohibition went into effect. It was located on 40th Street and 10th Ave.
The Ebling beer bottle emerging from the landfill through the process of tidal erosion. For the first time in 110 years it sees daylight after being encased in clay.
5th Ave NYC in 1905 when our horse would have been working. Note the presence of the one lone automobile, can you see it in that sea of horse-drawn carriages?
An older imagine when our horse would have been in the prime of his youth.
This image was taken by photographer Joseph Byron some time between 1900-1906 in NYC. The image is titled "Close of a Career in New York". It depicts an old work horse dead on the street where some children are playing in the gutter. Our horse would have been old but still working rhe same streets when this picture was taken. He likely experienced the same fate as this image depicts. It's sad. They were probably the last generation of working horses before automobiles took over.
That's all for now.
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