coinman123
Silver Member
It seems as if over the past month, my luck has finally picked up. A couple weeks ago I found a promising site, which produced 6 buttons, a shoe buckle part, and an 1803 Large Cent within the first hour that I was there. The next time I went there I found some more colonial buttons, a toasted copper, and a beautiful Barber Dime in AU condition. A day later I found another site, right across the street from that one, and ended up finding a good number of colonial buttons, and a couple shoe buckle parts, all during the first time that I was there. Today, I went out to another site, less than a mile away from the other two that I mentioned. It was a bit of a hike, most of it off trail (and through a swamp, as I later found out, to my disappointment), but the site seemed promising. Like the other two sites I that found over the past few weeks, it doesn't appear on any maps or records of any kind, and was likely to have never been visited by any other metal detectorist. When I finally got there, I noticed that the cellar hole was almost entirely collapsed and filled in. After likely two centuries of erosion, it was only a few feet deep, and all but just a few of the rocks that at one point lined it remained. I was a bit skeptical that this was actually a cellar hole, but the fact that it was clearly "L shaped" made me believe that it only could have been dug by man. Within a few minutes of turning on my metal detector, I got a rather nice signal, right next to the cellar hole. It ended up being a beautiful pewter shoe buckle frame, with the iron chape and tongue still present (though extremely corroded). I then moved away from the cellar hole, and found another shoe buckle part, a nice brass chape and tongue. I also found a nice dandy button in that area, and then decided to move back towards the cellar hole. There, along the edge of the cellar hole, I found two pewter rat tail spoons, both together in the same hole. In that area I also found what looks like 2/3 of a complete shoe buckle, that somehow broke in a rather unusual manner. There, I also found a child's thimble, a 1700's pewter blowhole button, and a long rectangular shoe buckle frame. I then started to move away from the cellar hole again, and quickly found a small corroded pewter button, and shortly after, a slightly concave brass flat button. On a hill side, on the other side of the cellar hole, I found a cracked tombac button with an intact iron shank, and then found another shoe buckle part, this time a brass chape. I decided at this point that it would be wise to start leaving before it would start to rain, remembering the extremely long walk that I would have to take to get back to my car. Right as I was leaving though, I tried metal detecting right next to the cellar hole again, and there, less than an inch deep, was a fragment from a brass shoe buckle frame. Based on the finds that I recovered today, I would guess that this site was abandoned probably sometime before around 1790 or so. Overall, I had a pretty exciting hunt at this new site, and can't wait to go back and see if I can find some more shoe buckle parts. I also found another site near by with a comparable history, I hope to eventually try that one too. Good luck this fall everyone, there is no better time to metal detect than when the leaves start to fall, and the bugs and weather start to get much easier to bear.
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