First Privy Dig

[Cobradude22]

Well guys, I dug my first privy. It was very underwhelming. Dug about 6 feet down and hit a hard clay bottom all around. Pulled out a broken Attica Indiana Coca Cola bottle. And this clear one. Anyone have an idea for the date on it? I also found an old dog toy, a very early Kodak camera piece, and a white metal bowl. Nothing else. I have two theories about my experience, the first being someone already dug it back in the day. Or... dating the camera, would have been around the last days the gentleman who lived there’s time period. So it could have been one of the last spots they moved the outhouse. The top was a stone square. The house with built in 1870. After I filled in the hole, we walked around with our black light flashlights “it was night then” took me 5 hours to dig and fill, I found this sweet uranium glass marble next to the old well. I guess it was worth it. If I ever dig one again, there better be some better glass inside Really just looking for what time period this bottle would be from, and also, I probed the edges and down from the bottom of the privy, so I felt there was nothing left. Hopefully the next experience will go smoother.

 

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[NJKLAGT]

The bottle is from somewhere between the mid-late 30s and early-mid 50s. Cool marble!

The privy may have been dug, but there are privies that are this empty, it's not super uncommon. I once dug a privy that contained a single jar, a hair comb, and a rusty can, haha, and I'm sure some of the guys on here have stories about doing even worse, sometimes you just get skunked, so don't get too discouraged. An older pit(s) might be nearby, so probe around this pit and see if you can find the others, or try another part of the yard. Think about smell and sun/wind direction, think about convenience, and think like a person who has to use the washroom really badly in the middle of a winter night, haha.

One time I dug a big wide 10 footer that was already dug - that's a lot of dirt, quite the learning experience, haha. But, if you don't dig it, you'll never know for sure, and hey, I got to collect the things that the previous diggers missed or considered undesirable, and I still got some exercise and had a lot of fun!

Here is an image I made from that dig, to help determine (from a glance) whether or not a privy has been dug, 'hope it helps! And here are the things that the first diggers missed or left behind, good enough finds for me!

View attachment privy.bmp

 

[Red-Coat]

It’s not completely clear from your picture but, with a bit of enhancement, that looks to me like an Owens-Illinois mark in the centre.



If that’s what it is then the bottle can’t be older than 1929, which is when that trademark was first used. There appears to be a ‘9’ at the left and a ‘0’ at the right, which would be plant number and date code respectively. It can’t be the other way up as ‘0’ and ‘6’ because there was no plant that had ‘zero’ as a code. The other numbers would be mould codes.

For Owens-Illinois, the plant code ‘9’ would be Streator, Illinois which began production in 1930 and that’s consistent with the date code since ‘0’ would be for 1930. The same number was used for 1940, but distinguished by having a full stop (period) after the number, which I don’t see. From 1947 they were using two-digit date codes.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

I own my ancestral farm, first claimed and settled during the 1700's.

I installed running water and the first in house toilet in 1983. Behind the house there's a sunken area of the ground, down from the surrounding soil by about 6". I remember fearing I'd fall in that hole, and it was deep.

I've never tried digging it. Granny forebid throwing trash in there - strictly for human waste....

So, it remains a depression in the ground behind my house, to never be dug except by succeeding generations....