Interesting Finds from Late 18th Century NJ Site

[randazzo1]

Hi All,

We had a chance to hit up one of our old sites with the nice weather here in NJ (and the day off). In addition to the usual 50 or so nails we turned up some interesting items. The site consists mainly of a farm road connecting a series of early buildings (only foundations remain). Maps of the area place the buiildings in the 1733-1802 range. There was significant rev war activity about a mile from the site but we've found nothing indicating such activity on the actual site.

Heres a group shot of yesterday's notable finds:

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The large cent is a draped bust cent 179? (second one from this site). The chinese coin is a Ch'ien Lung coin 1736-1795. I have no idea what the little fork or the lead disk are - they are posted in what is it.

Anyway - the site is mostly over grown and wooded - there doesn't seem to be any reasoning behind where the targets show up - they are spread all over the site. Anyone have any hints for searching in wooded areas that were once farms (we hit the foundations pretty hard)?

Thanks for looking

randazzo1

 

[jrsherman]

cant help you on the ID's, unless the lead was a hem weight, but pretty neat finds! I'd dearly love to find a draped anything!!

 

[tymcmurray]

Way to go!

 

[kooljay]

The small forked item is part of the center section of a colonial shoe/knee buckle. Nice finds.

 

[West Jersey Detecting]

Hi All,


Anyway - the site is mostly over grown and wooded - there doesn't seem to be any reasoning behind where the targets show up - they are spread all over the site. Anyone have any hints for searching in wooded areas that were once farms (we hit the foundations pretty hard)?

Thanks for looking

randazzo1

Randazzo,

I have been working one of my favorite sites that was a former field, now wooded. I first started detecting the site more than 3 years ago. At first I only found buttons, many of them, but no coins until last year when I found an 1809 half cent. Something (or someone) told me there must be more coins, so I stuck with the site. I am now up to 10 coppers from the site.

The coppers started to flow when I began to imagine the land 200 years ago. I looked for clues as to where the people were most likely to have lost things. In my case there is a creek that ran in back of the farm. I found what appeared to be an old road bed that ran up from the creek. I also found stones placed at intervals that marked what must have been a trail or possibly another road. These roadbeds had steep banks leading down to the creek, which is where I found an Irish Halfpenny and two large cents dated 1819 & 1823.

I also searched for the trash dump. Every old homestead has one. These are easily identified by all the trash signals your detector will find, When I found the trash site, there was not too much of the typical trashy signals you would expect, but there were many bits of very old broken glass. There was also a pile of clam shells, which was a dead giveaway of pre 20th century activity. Again I concentrated on the hillside. This time I found the coin that is in my avatar, the 1798 Draped Bust Cent.

Most of the other coins found at the site were found by working in concentric circles away from the site that the buttons came from. A few more were found by shear luck. Simply working the land in small areas at a time, gridding off a plot and then moving on to the next plot.

I have been back to this site more than 15 times and it will be many more trips before I am done with the site.

I hope this information helps!

 

[CRUSADER]

The small forked item is part of the center section of a colonial shoe/knee buckle. Nice finds.

Yeap, 18th C shoe buckle piece

 

[lonewolfe]

Cool finds

HH

 

[randazzo1]

Thanks for looking and for the info

jrsherman - i see a draped something in your immediate future

kooljay - thanks for the info

tymcmurray - thanks

Neil - that does help. it can get discouraging when you go to site, find a half dozen items, come back in a week find nothing, and then randomly return and find more stuff without any apparent reason. I feel like the site is too big to cover every inch of it and I usually talk my brothers into taking the trip - which is fine as long as we are finding stuff - but if the finds are scarce, the less than obsessed succumb to bordem. I will try the concentric circles. Its also hard for me to imagine the area as a farm because of all the trees - I see it as a farm on the map and I've found a number of plow scarred stones, but it just looks like woods. I'll take some pictures next time I'm out.

CRUSADER - thanks for the info sir

lonewolfe - thanks