Mystery House Journal

[robertk]

Just about the time I got my new Deus II, I was looking at an old map of my neighborhood and discovered that in 1940, there was a house sitting in what is now my front yard. This surprised me greatly, so I started hunting old photos and found a 1955 aerial photo, with no trace of the house. So it was there sometime before 1940 to get "on the map", but was completely vanished by 1955.

So I worked out the distances from the old map and got a good guess to where the house was, and started hunting. I quickly discovered that my entire front yard is littered with iron.

I don't know when the house was built, but I'm assuming mid to late 1800's. So far I haven't found anything with a date on it, but what little I have found seems to back up those dates.

So I'm starting this thread to post interesting things, mostly for feedback as I try to understand the history of those who were here before I was. Here's some of the stuff I've found so far. Any comments on what they are, or what they are used for, are welcome.

This was identified (thanks to this board!) as a suspender adjuster, pre-1920.


And this one is part of a victorian bed rail attachment.


This one is a spoon, obviously. Silver plated, well worn. I haven't found an exact match on the pattern and I can't quite read the maker's mark, but the stuff I find that's close is in the early 1880's. Interestingly, I found this standing vertically in the ground, big end down. It took some digging to extract it.



I've also found a few shotgun shell end caps. At first I ignored these thinking they were just trash from a careless modern hunter, but after investigating, these are from around 1900 (Union Metal Cartridge Company, "New Club" style, produced between 1891 and 1911).


And some iron stuff...



I've found several of those square nuts. They look like they might be blacksmith-made because while the hole diameter is pretty consistent, the size and thickness of the nut itself varies quite a bit. And that thing that looks like a telegraph insulator is a mystery -- iron wouldn't make a very good insulator.

Then there's this partial plate -- quarter inch thick and heavy. Maybe a stove part?



And then there's this thing.

It's about 8" diameter, about an inch thick, with a 1/4" "rim" around one side, totally flat on the other. And it's heavy -- weighing exactly 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs) in its current state. No obvious handle or anything to indicate use.

So there's what I know so far. I will post more as I discover it...

 

[robertk]

I bought a five gallon bucket of Evapo-rust and have the door from the other night soaking in it. Mostly. It doesn't quite fit all the way in, but it's close enough, I think.

Meanwhile, this evening I removed some more rock and found some more interesting things.

The mechanism from an oil lamp:


A strange metal rod (looks a bit like a round file, but has no teeth and no handle), and piece of something that isn't nearly as rusty as everything else in there:


A broken bottle (all the pieces might actually be there, I have them soaking to get the mud out and will try to reassemble). This one is "DR S. B. H. & CO PR REGISTERED", which apparently was a patent medicine called Peruna made between 1880 and 1910, marketed as a cure-all and sold for a dollar a bottle.


And finally, something that I haven't fully recovered yet. It looks like maybe a bucket or a thin-walled pot or something. It definitely has a lip to it. But I've got more digging to do before it will come out. It would be nice to get it out intact -- most of the thin metal in there just crumbles to bits as soon as I get it free.

 

[robertk]

Had a nice vacation break for most of a week, so no digging to speak of. Today I loaded up some of the rocks I've dug out so far to make way for more digging. Here is what I have taken out of the cellar hole and privy hole so far. And I'm nowhere near done yet. I'm guessing the cellar hole is not even halfway excavated yet, and probably less than that for the privy. Unfortunately with the days getting shorter I have less time for digging in the evening, but I'm doing the best I can.

The center stack is 4 feet high, and the truck bed is on an F150, with nothing in the bed but rocks. It's an incredible amount of rock considering how little I've got excavated. I wonder if this is why I can't find the house foundation -- it may all be in the hole!



In other news, that stove door I found a while back has been soaking in a 5-gallon bucket of Evapo-Rust. It looks fantastic! I've got it in there for one more round to get some stuff on the bottom edge, but then I'll oil it down and post photos. I'm stoked. It's going to have to become a cabinet door or something.

 

[robertk]

Only had a few minutes to hunt last night. Found the usual iron stuff (railroad spike, some random bars and bits) and part of a knife. The knife was a very interesting find, partly just because of what it is, but also because of how it sounded on the Deus II. When I got the signal, it made three distinct sounds -- a mid-tone "lead or brass" tweet, a low iron grunt, and another mid-tone tweet. Sweeping at 90 degrees it was a bouncy iron sound. I figured it was probably some bent piece of rusty iron, but the lead-brass sound was convincing enough I thought maybe a shot shell headstamp or a bullet. It turned out to be a knife handle -- with something that looks like lead at the pommel and the bolster. So the detector actually sounded off on the different parts of the same item individually. How's that for target separation?

Anyway... the handle is either wood or bone, kinda hard to tell since it's badly deteriorated, with one side missing entirely. The blade is also missing, but enough of it remains to see it was a fixed blade knife, possible a table knife or steak knife, since it seems rather small for a hunting or utility knife. The handle is four or five inches long, about like a modern steak knife. As usual, not valuable or especially significant, just kinda cool, IMO.

 

[robertk]

I searched around online and didn’t find this particular knife. But I did find several similar knives. It was most likely a butter knife, most likely had wood handles with decorative pewter inlays, and dates from the civil war era. That makes it one of the older items from this site. Here’s a close up of the pommel end. I didn’t even notice last night that it was a flower.

 

[scruggs]

You have made a lot of interesting finds, keep it up!

 

[robertk]

I thought I'd get some digging or hunting time over the holiday weekend, but it was not to be. Between the rocks, the garden, the socializing, and the rain, all I managed was a little 30 minute hunt last night. But It was still fun and enlightening. I checked out a small hole that was (relatively) far away from the area I've been hunting (spotted on a LIDAR image -- thanks @DownEast_Detecting!). I didn't really expect anything, since it was so far off to the side, but it turned out there are signals there too, mostly iron like out in the main area. But I did find a nice little brass buckle thing -- maybe a suspender buckle or adjuster? Also the smallest horseshoe I've found so far, and the knowledge that the search area is quite a bit bigger than I thought.



And just for grins, here are all the rocks I've taken out of the cellar and privy holes so far. Two pickup beds full. I am actually amazed that they all came out of the hole, it doesn't look big enough to have had that many rocks come out of it. We're going to make a garden wall and wishing well out of them once I get all the others out (which may be a while).

 

[robertk]

Another short hunt tonight. I found the mandatory railroad spike, a couple of bullets, fired and not, some random iron bits, a tiny piece of wire that sounded way bigger than it was, half an ornate hinge, and some square nails. I dug the square nails mostly just to find out what they were. They ring up very low TID (4 or 5), with a little iron grunt noise that I tend to just ignore. But that noise happens so often, I figured dig several to see if it's a consistent thing. And every single one of those signals I dug was a square nail. So I have learned something today, and that means I know where the greatest concentration of nails is, and therefore where the house was. Neat.



In other news, remember the rusty cast iron stove door I found in the cellar hole that I wanted to clean up? Well I got a five-gallon jug of Evaporust, and it just barely fit. I actually had to turn it a few times to get both ends, but it cleaned up really nicely. It even de-rusted the mounting holes. I'm definitely going to do something with it, I just don't know what yet. Here's the before and after...

 

[robertk]

A few more pieces of the puzzle... (click to enlarge)



A stove leg, some glass bits, a couple of unidentified iron pieces, some porcelain, and a spoon. The spoon is identical to one I found previously. I'd like to straighten it out, but I'm afraid that might break it. I'd rather have a bent spoon than a broken one.



The porcelain bit is very interesting. It says "Royal Ironstone China", and most of the name "Albert Meakin", and then "England". This was apparently manufactured in England for the American market sometime in the 1890s by the Albert Meakin company, of Staffordshire, England. Too bad it isn't whole -- I can't even say for sure what sort of thing it was -- but it's cool to see the logo.


Last but not least, this little thing. From the way the end is made, I'm guessing it's a latch. Turn it one way, the bump would hold it closed. Turn it 180 degrees, the notch would let it open. I imagine it's from a door, but to what? Is this another stove part?

 

[robertk]

I didn't get any digging time yesterday -- too many chores -- but I did find out a new fact. Apparently the stove that I've been finding rusty parts of was originally red. Since the huge success with the Evaporust on the ornate door, I decided to go ahead and clean up several of the other parts. They haven't been soaking long enough to be "clean" yet, but I took them out to brush off any loose rust, and discovered that almost all the pieces have red paint under the rust. This is a nice surprise. You can see red on all these pieces. And one piece revealed a number (17) that I didn't know was there under the rust either. One of these days maybe I'll have enough pieces that I can identify the stove.

 

[robertk]

It's been busy here, between work and fall/winter stuff, so not much digging. The shorter days don't give me enough daylight at the end of the day to do much. But I did manage to get out with the detector and swing around a bit for a couple of nights this week. Here's the stuff I found. Nothing to write home about, but still interesting (to me, anyway).
More stove parts, nuts and bolts, bits of glass, a spoon, some random iron bits, and some larger pieces that I don't know what they are. The spoon handle and smashed bowl to it were in the same hole with the bent square nail and the two iron things right above it in the photo. Mixed signal that was really hard to pinpoint.