xcopperstax
Silver Member
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2018
- Messages
- 2,508
- Reaction score
- 4,873
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Detector(s) used
- Garrett AT Max
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I've been in a bit of a treasure slump lately. I went out on Saturday to a couple fields that were possibly colonial and really found nothing but a wheat, a barrel banded musket ball, and I eyeballed a marble.... oh and I found many deer ticks on my person while detecting some nearby woods. Pretty bogus as far as hunts go. Sunday I gave it another try and headed out with the Silver Bandit and a few other detectorists. We were searching two old cellar hole sites out in the woods. I had detected out here once before and found very little but these types of spots really get my imagination fired up. I try to imagine what it was like when they used to be houses. The first area was a giant deep cellar hole that had been detected pretty hard but we were hoping there were still some things to find. I was not finding anything when Ryan kindly suggested that I check the briars as nobody had gone in there yet. I found a nice little flat button right away with the words "warranted standard gilt" on it with a semi squashed shank and a plain face side. Maybe I am detecting the wrong kinds of spots but I don't find buttons too often! This had me excited. Probably around five minutes later right on the edge of the hole I got an iffy signal with some high tones in it. I dug down and ended up finding a perfectly intact civil war general service cuff button! A first for me so I was very happy! Civil war stuff in Mass is not super common. This site had all kinds of cool stuff, a possible graveyard, smaller cellar holes, a cart road, and a well that you could fall into if you didn't watch where you were walking. The beauty of these places is really something. Not much was being found so we walked a few hundred feet down the road to the next cellar hole that had a well, an animal pen, walled in front yard, a possible root cellar and stone walls galore. I had only been there a couple minutes when I got a nice sounding high tone in the front yard and dug out a green copper disc that looked like a large cent but a little smaller. I went to brush the dirt off and saw a full but bent shank with some writing... flip it over and brush the dirt a little and it turned out to be a Massachusetts militia button!!! It turns out that it was a match to the one that the silver bandit had found there a week before! These were most definitely from the same owner / coat. I was pretty much floored for the day! The site had a lot of iron in the ground so there were a lot of false tones and things that sounded good but turned out to be nails. We detected for another hour and called it a day. I took the buttons home and dropped them in some fresh lemon juice for a bit. (that might have been a bad move but it seemed to have cleaned them up pretty well) I believe the Mass militia button may dates to the 1820's -30's and says London extra quality on the back. There is some gilt left on it and I hope to get some naval jelly on it to see if I can reveal any more. I count myself really lucky to have found these buttons: I was just saying the other day that I have not found any military buttons! ...so when it rains it pours I guess! It's probably not particularly valuable in this condition but finding a piece of Mass history in Mass? Priceless! Thanks joining me on my treasure adventure!
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