Cellar Hole Help Please

[Fishingfromakayak]

Hello all. I am a newbie at Cellar Hole hunting and am in Western Mass. I have only found one cellar hole so far. Does anyone have any tips for locating them ? I am not asking for you to tell me were your favorite holes are but am asking about doing the research to find them.
The one that I did find was from looking at an old topographical map of my area and seeing that there was a building at the location of a reservoir that was abandoned when the reservoir was built. After going to the cellar hole I may change my name to "The Nail King" lol thats all I found.

 

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[gunsil]

I went to my local historical society where they have and sell maps from the 1850s and 1870s, and they also have one with all the colonial homes and farms on them. These all show where dwellings were and are how I find old foundations and cellar holes. You will have to interpolate where the present roads are in reference to where the old ones were, and there are computer programs that will help with that. You can also go to Historical maps.com and find early maps of your area. I prefer my paper maps, but many use the online ones.

 

[1KBlueTuber]

If you're in western mass it should be pretty easy to locate potential cellars. If I find an old thoroughfare meaning an old dirt road with stone walls on each side and fairly narrow there's a very good chance there's a few cellar holes along it. Also if you see 2 marriage trees or 2 old maple trees together that don't match the woods around them looking quite a bit older you're likely to find a foundation in back of them. A lot of early 1700s houses were built facing south/south west to get available light for most of the day and that's a good indication of where the front yard was. Make sure to do all around the stone walled areas as those were mostly grazing/planting fields. There will be a lot less nails and iron and a better chance to recover deep period targets. These targets came from a colonial field last night 50 yards from the cellar hole. The coin is a 1792 6 deniers from France. I'm in southern NH