A Nice Privy Finally Releases Some Treasure, Its Been Awhile!

[jgas]

A Nice Privy Finally Releases Some Treasure, It's Been Awhile!

Hello everyone it's been quite some time since I last posted. Man has it been a tough season so far for us privy diggers. Just could not seem to get anything good to show so far, until this pit showed up. Looks like it's going to be a huge privy by our standards. Most of the time they are around 4 feet by 4 feet by 6 feet deep. This one appears to be around 5 feet wide, 6 feet deep and around 14 feet long. It was used by 3 families by the looks of the maps. The ground was as hard as concrete for the first couple of feet. I really don't know how we probed it. But we did and it worked out to be a nice 1860-1890 privy.
Started out with a very nice wax seal fruit jar with FA & Co embossed on the base. There were several other broken ones as well. Then a few medicines and the usual broken plates, bowls, ceramics and pipes. Then Don pulls out our first Doyle Hop Bitters patent 1872 Cabin style bottle. I've never even seen a piece and all the pits we have dug. So finding a whole one was great. Found a couple champagne bottles as well. A lot of slicks but one was embossed S.H. Wilson's Superior Bird Tonic. That's a first as well. That one might be a little more of a scarce bottle. A couple of pharmacy bottles from Chicago as well as Pittsburgh. A Seely's bottle, a couple of R.E. Sellers, a Halsey Brothers and a Wm. S Merrell chemical co. bottle.
Then the almighty CRYER came to light. A beautiful double eagle flask from Pittsburgh. A very nice Olive Green one too. Ouch those hurt. But at the end of the day it was a pit full of decent finds. And whats great about it is that we only did maybe half the pit before darkness set it. We plan to hit the rest next week in hopes of letting some more glass see the light of day for the first time in 150 years! Hopefully I will be posting a bit more in the near future, until then be safe out there and good luck with your treasure hunting! jgas

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

DR.ÖTEK Metal Detector, Waterproof Gold Detector, Pinpoint & Terrain Modes, Professional Metal Detector - Grab it through Amazon!

[vpnavy]

Nice finds and one gigantic hole jgas!

 

[Valley Ranger]

Very nice.

 

[wvwildman]

nice finds congrats HH

 

[digging440yrs]

AWESOME FINDS----NEVER HURTS TO FIND A DOYLES HOPS BITTERS----THANKS FOR THE PICS--

 

[Petrie502]

Me and my cousin are digging a good one Tuesday can't wait great bottles man

 

[CoilyGirl]

Wow,what great finds and such a perfectly square hole too! I would love to see someone dig a privy some day and see how its done.

 

[doc-d]

Great finds and thank you for sharing

 

[izer54]

Excellent finds. HH

 

[thecolonel]

Very nice opening! Very nice contents!

 

[BuckleBoy]

AWESOME!!!

 

[Steve in PA]

Great bottles! Love the Doyles Hop Bitters. I have a few questions if you don't mind. How deep before you started hitting glass? Did you locate that pit using the fire insurance maps? It looks to be in the middle of the yard which is normally unusual.

 

[GioTheGreek]

Fantastic bottles! I'm awaiting a reply to Steve's questions. :P

Happy hunting!

 

[Tnmountains]

Jgas it is about time we saw your head sticking out of a privy hole. You always get some good things and are the best I have seen. Enjoy seeing the pictures. You do a well organized dig.

 

[OneWetKnee]

Outstanding bottles !! Do you then screen the dirt for the other smalls that found their way into the privy?

 

[CASPER-2]

 

[woolshed]

Nice hole, and what a great result. We call them Dunny Holes in Oz.

Cheers, Woolshed

 

[JohnnyRebCSA]

How do you know where those sites are? How do you keep from breaking the bottles?

 

[zaxfire69]

Awesome Glass! Congrats.

 

[jgas]

Hey All thanks for the great replies. As far as the questions go, these are trade secrets and I cannot give them out! Just Kidding...Ha...The Sanborn Fire maps I utilize all the time. But it seems like 99% of the time the privies are not on the maps. But this time it appears it was. In fact the map placed it perfectly. We figured it was going to be a pit that was used by 3 homes which were all on one piece of property. A community pit so to speak. So this is why the privy is so long. Possibly 4 to 6 holes in one box. We had evidence of two "dump" areas in part that we have dug so far. Then there was a break of about 2 feet until we hit the continuing of the pit for another 6 feet long. So quite the large pit. The first items we found just below the surface were bricks. They used these to line the box base as a foundation. Then tossed em in at the end of its use when they got indoor plumbing. Then there was the tell tale sign of one piece of the bottom of a bottle that was a sarsaparilla. Good sign. If thats at the top then the use layer at the base should be good. Usually is good. As you can see in the picture of the pit wall with the layers of coal ash and sand. These are great signs of use. And finally at the base around 4 to 5 feet below the last layer of sand will be the "dirty dirt" The darker soil laden with seeds and bottles, plates etc. One thing I promise the owners of the properties that we dig is that we take great care in cutting the grass perfectly, using tarps and replace everything as best we can. This one really turned out great and the owner said he would let us dig anywhere anytime. That secures our permission and possibly word of mouth to get further properties to do. I gave them about 30 bottles as well to display in their home. Karma ya know!! I do have a sifter screen but have not used it in awhile, I should..In fact we have metal detected the dirt piles as well in the past. I need to get back into the habit of doing it again. Hopefully that helps ya out. Don't hesitate to ask all you like. I love to help out when I can. Don and I hopefully will have more to show soon. Thanks again, jgas