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...

 

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[robertk]

First bullet in o.p. or near is a heeled" bullet.

Cool! Thanks for the info. I didn't know about that style.

You have pictured an elongated flattish staple.
It looks like a tiny "log dog". Curious piece , I wonder it's use. L.o.l...

I have wondered as well. Too small for logs, unless they were really small logs, but that is what it looks like.

You're not unearthing "clinkers" from coal burning?

I don't think so. We've done some forging with coal, and the I haven't dug anything that looks like the slag pieces from that. I have dug a couple of rocks that set the detector off, but they're just little gravel-sized bits that don't look like anything in particular. I have found what looks like wood ash in various spots while digging though. Not a lot in any one area though.

Your wire thing with the smaller round end and open bigger other end might hold a bucket.

That makes a lot of sense. You're probably on to something there.

As you see ,a trip to the dump , or a trash service wasn't the deal.

Yep. I keep hoping there's a trash dump someplace (and I have an idea where one might be, but haven't had time to investigate yet).

 

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[WannaDig3687]

I spent what felt like forever last night digging out a particularly large stone that was sitting right on top of a bottle. All I could see was the end of the bottle, but the stone was sitting right on it, so I couldn't pry at it or otherwise get any leverage to pull it out, so I just had to dig all around it until I got it out.

View attachment 2094480

It took a long time, lots of other smaller rocks wedged in around it, and several random pieces of glass to investigate along the way, but I finally got it out. It's the biggest rock to come out of there yet, as big as the bucket I use for all the glass pieces.

View attachment 2094479

With that big rock sitting on the bottle, I knew it was not likely to be intact, despite the appearance of the end. And it wasn't. But, it was only broken a little bit (the top and a sliver in the back), and the broken pieces were right there with it, so I was able to mostly reassemble the bottle. Here it is coming out of the ground, and after cleaning and reassembling.
View attachment 2094486
View attachment 2094482 View attachment 2094483 View attachment 2094484 View attachment 2094485

The embossing reads "HAZELTINE & CO", "PISO'S CURE", and "FOR CONSUMPTION". According to what I could find, this was a quack medicine made by a company started in 1864. The company name changed to "The Piso Company" in 1894, so presumably this bottle came from between 1864 and 1894. Apparently the "cure" didn't actually remedy consumption (tuberculosis), but made you not care, because it contained opium, cannabis, chloroform, and alcohol in varying proportions depending on the year. It sold for 25 cents a bottle. There is a history of the company here (PDF) if you're curious.

I also retrieved a larger fragment that was the rest of the "R. H" fragment I found the other day. Now I can deduce that it said "DR. HARTER'S", which means this is another medicine bottle. I can't tell exactly what kind from the fragment, and he sold several formulations, including a "Wild Cherry Bitters" that was very popular. The company was in St. Louis from 1855 to 1895, then was sold and moved. More info here if you're curious.
View attachment 2094481

So, today I learned that whoever lived in the mystery house was not always in good health, and I'm guessing they had, or at least thought they had, tuberculosis at some point. I also found a small fragment the other day (that I failed to post) that had the partial words "COU" and "S" on it -- perhaps "cough syrup"? That would be consistent, but with such a small fragment I can't be sure that's what it said.

This is fun.

Now I want a Piso’s bottle! That is a very good article. The Dr. Harter’s Wild Cherry Bitters was ringing a bell. I started reading the article and it jogged my memory. A clean out of a cabinet began in search for a recent book I purchased. I don’t know where I stashed that one. Anyway, I have been hoping to find one of those bottles because of the Dayton connection. So cool that you were able to ID that fragment AND putting the Piso bottle back together!

 

[robertk]

A few more minute in the cellar, a few more bits and pieces...

A knife handle with some of the wood still attached (though it started to flake off almost immediately on recovery). Some more mason jar fragments, part of what appears to be a wine glass, some more random pottery and glass fragments, and half of a cast iron frying pan. I hoped the pan was complete when I was digging it out, but alas, it was not to be. It doesn't have any maker's marks that I can see, just a single line on the bottom.





And speaking of pottery fragments... here's the work in progress reconstructing the bowl. We have fragments from at least two other bowls, but this one is the most complete of all of them. Obviously we're missing the bottom (or at least if it's here we haven't identified it yet).

 

[WannaDig3687]

,

A few more minute in the cellar, a few more bits and pieces...

A knife handle with some of the wood still attached (though it started to flake off almost immediately on recovery). Some more mason jar fragments, part of what appears to be a wine glass, some more random pottery and glass fragments, and half of a cast iron frying pan. I hoped the pan was complete when I was digging it out, but alas, it was not to be. It doesn't have any maker's marks that I can see, just a single line on the bottom.

View attachment 2114975 View attachment 2114976

View attachment 2114979 View attachment 2114980

And speaking of pottery fragments... here's the work in progress reconstructing the bowl. We have fragments from at least two other bowls, but this one is the most complete of all of them. Obviously we're missing the bottom (or at least if it's here we haven't identified it yet).
View attachment 2114977 View attachment 2114978

There is something about finding a utensil. I love it!

The the crock bowl looks great! I hope you find more pieces of it.

 

[robertk]

I dug a little yesterday. Had hoped to find more pieces of pottery for the bowls we're reassembling, but I didn't find a single piece. Seems odd. So I jumped over to the cellar hole and pulled out a few more rocks and more barbed wire and rusty sheet metal bits. I did find one piece of a plate, which is interesting, but not enough to tell much about. I presume the "cracked" finish is the way it originally looked, but don't know. Here's front and back.



In other news, I found some more of the bitters bottle base, and have it completely reassembled. It's just the base, but still, pretty neat.



And then there's the bowl project. We now have pieces of at least three different bowls, but only enough to partially reassemble two of them. One is pretty much complete except for the base, which I have yet to find a single piece of.



The other is only about half of it, also missing the base entirely.



We also discovered that the bowls would nest perfectly inside each other. Here's the "half" nested in the "whole" bowl -- a perfect fit.



I hope we find the base and the rest of the second bowl (and without digging up the entire yard).

 

[robertk]

A while back I dug a cranky thing that I didn't know what it was.



So I posted it over on the "What is it" forum in this post. I really had no idea, at first thinking it might be part of the steering for a small wagon or something, but as I was writing the post, realized it looked like a handle crank to something. I was very happy when @ARC recognized it as possibly the handle to a coffee grinder, and even linking to one that looked similar. Here's a screenshot of that reply:

I thought that looked like a really good match. I thought about it for a while, and since that item was actually being offered for sale, I went ahead and bought it. It arrived yesterday, and I gotta say, it's a perfect match. Here is the actual coffee grinder next to the piece I dug. It looks like the exact same part to me (or would, if I cleaned off all the rust and crud from the one I dug). The length and curve of the handle match, the square top nut, even the length of the pin through the wooden handle. It's a match.

Unfortunately there are no maker marks or anything to tell me any more about the history of the grinder, but I'm still happy to have it. It's probably a bit over the top to buy it just because of a piece of 150-year-old metal junk I dug up. But somehow I think it's cool to be using a coffee grinder that's the same (or very similar) to the one used by what was probably the first European to live on what is now my property. (And yes, it still grinds coffee just fine. I made a cup with it this morning. In fact it grinds much easier than the modern manual grinder I normally use. )