Awesome Hunt with a BOBCAT! USA button, 2 more Cannonballs, Coins, Colonial & More!!!

mangum · May 21, 2014

Awesome Hunt with a BOBCAT! USA button, 2 more Cannonballs, Coins, Colonial & More!!!

Hello all! I got together with 4 other friends for 3 days this weekend to do some serious digging. We rented a bobcat to clear out the undergrowth & do some digging (with the landowner's permission of course, I wasn't detecting with that wrestler guy lol). This is the same location where I found the 3 howitzer shells, the home of a Revolutionary War general. There was an encampment here & we found it! (a very small portion of it)

The find of the weekend was a beautiful USA Continental Army button found by Randy! I want one bad, it's going to happen soon, I can feel it! It's in amazing shape. There is no edge loss whatsoever! We were hunting a spot that had a lot of nails where I found my 3 shells. We decided to take a layer off the top of a roughly 20ftx20ft area. Then we detected that & found a few things. We decided to take another layer off & see if we could still hear iron, we did. I got a great signal & pulled up a thimble. Then I see Randy smiling & dropped something into my buddy's Bill's hand. It was a USA button! Then Chris noticed some ash. He started digging & it was a fire pit! We dug it out and found a lot of animal bones, nails, pottery & a tombac button. At that point we decided to clear off the area right beside this area. We found another fire pit! It was a near perfect gray circle visible. Unfortunately this was the last day (at the end of the day) that we had the bobcat to use. We marked the area & will be back soon to look for the larger encampment. This was a really neat experience, it made me realize how much can be masked by all the iron.

We recovered a lot of relics throughout the weekend, I've included some of my buddies finds as well. Chris found 2 more howitzer shells right next to each other (about 1.5 ft down). This makes 7 from this site! I've found 3 & Chris has found 3 so it's a contest now to see who finds #4!
I found everything except what I have named. Now, I'll let the relics speak for themselves. Thanks for looking& HH!

metalev4 · May 22, 2014

Awesome hunt! That USA is a stunner. Excellent finds.

Msbeepbeep · May 22, 2014

Awesome collection of finds! Congrats!

mangum · May 22, 2014

If anyone has a reference other than this article IDing these for military coats I'd love to see it. Not discrediting the article but I haven't seen anything like this used on Rev War jackets although I have only seen reproductions.

Steve in PA · May 22, 2014

mangum said:
If anyone has a reference other than this article IDing these for military coats I'd love to see it. Not discrediting the article but I haven't seen anything like this used on Rev War jackets although I have only seen reproductions.

That's why I posted it as 'food for thought". I have found the same curved "shield" piece on colonial military sites. It doesn't have the "prongs" like the shield strap tippets. The boss does appear to have a had a wire embedded in the boss which would be more appropriate for affixing to cloth than leather. I have not studied coat tails of period jackets either, and am not sold on this theory myself.

mangum · May 22, 2014

Steve in PA said:
That's why I posted it as 'food for thought". I have found the same curved "shield" piece on colonial military sites. It doesn't have the "prongs" like the shield strap tippets. The boss does appear to have a had a wire embedded in the boss which would be more appropriate for affixing to cloth than leather. I have not studied coat tails of period jackets either, and am not sold on this theory myself.

I'm going to do some research, I'll send you a message if I find anything.

Bill D. (VA) · May 22, 2014

Outstanding post Josh! You guys did great and must have had a ball using the bobcat. I can't begin to tell you how many sites I could use one of those in. Are you bringing in the machine in for round 2 when you return?

mangum · May 22, 2014

Bill D. (VA) said:
Outstanding post Josh! You guys did great and must have had a ball using the bobcat. I can't begin to tell you how many sites I could use one of those in. Are you bringing in the machine in for round 2 when you return?

Thanks Bill, it was a ball! I want to bring it again & locate the other firepits. Unfortunately only one of the guys knows how to operate it & has the trailer. It's not cheap but not unrealistic. It was $290 for the rental & about $65 for the grass seed & sorghum. We picked it up Friday after 12 & had to have it back Monday AM. We only got charged for one day as long as we didn't use it over 8 hours. It was actually a good deal. It worked out to $71 a person with 5 people. It was definitely worth if in my opinion.

Silver Tree Chaser · May 22, 2014

That USA button is terrific! Good luck on the return trip. So you can rent a bobcat excavator - Hmmmmmm? That's one dig tool that I've never tried.

ShovelNose · May 23, 2014

Looks like a great adventure Josh. Amazing how much dirt has filtered on top of all this. Some really great finds.

BuckleBoy · May 23, 2014

Man, that's a great hunt for sure. Get up there and dig out all those fire pits. You might find that they're equally spaced apart from each other. Might make them much easier to locate and dig.

Congrats on the great recoveries!

-Buck

HomeGuardDan · May 23, 2014

Now that looks like some serious fun...I would hunt every inch of that place until nothing was left. There certainly should be some trash pits!

nice going. Mark sure you preserve that USA as the pewter will eventually dry out if not stabilized.

Dan

mangum · May 23, 2014

HomeGuardDan said:
Now that looks like some serious fun...I would hunt every inch of that place until nothing was left. There certainly should be some trash pits!

nice going. Mark sure you preserve that USA as the pewter will eventually dry out if not stabilized.

Dan

We looked for privies & trash pits but didn't have any luck, it would be glorious if we could locate them. I plan on recovering as much as I can from the site, it's very important to me & there's a ton of history behind the property. I wish I could share more but we are far from done with this location. My buddy found the USA, not me. I swear when it came out of the ground it was almost shiny. The pic I posted is uncleaned. There is no edge loss whatsoever, not sure it will need anything but an air tight case. The photos do not really do it justice... I am getting better at restoring the pewter buttons using my buddy's method. It's basically stabilizing the edges with super glue (with a tiny pin or toothpick). Those cracked edges soak it right up & you're not left with a glossy shiny mess.