Lost and Found

[kecleveland]

This afternoon I was digging a couple holes for new trees, and found a bit of treasure. My house is an old Dutch colonial; part of it was built around 1730, and the main part is circa 1780. The house actually has some ties to the revolution. The person who built my house fought in the revolution, the second owner was Nathan Hale's college roommate at Yale, LaFayette marched his troops by the house, and John Adams even strolled by the house on his way to Philadelphia for the Continental Congress. Anytime I dig or garden I will find old bits of pottery. Today, while planting the tree I noticed a small disk in the dirt. I picked it up, noticed some markings on it, and brought it inside to clean up. Now I've found some old coins in my house before (50 years old or so), but never anything like this. Once it was cleaned up I looked it up online and discovered that it was a 1773 British half penny. A bust of King George himself was on one side. Maybe the penny once belonged to Nathan Hale! Anyway, I ended up putting in the small jar with another momento we found, an old wedding band. I guess now I'll have to get a metal detector to search for more treasures.

What have you guys found around your old homes?

[Old Colonial]

Our house is about 1806. We've found a lot of broken pottery, nails, parts of shutter dogs, metal that may have come from farm impletements and a bunch of horse shoes. Some day we'll clean it all up and see what we can do with it. My wife found a couple spindles for a spinning wheel in the dirt cellar.

Jeff

[Raine]

our back road was recently dug for new water lines. DH brought home a glass beer bottle from the hennepin brewing co. which closed due to the prohibition. Also a pottery jug. Probably used for moonshine due to the prohibition.

[mr Henry]

I've found too many things to list. The last time I dug in the ground I found a piece of pottery with the potters mark on it dating back to early 1900. Why they threw broken pottery around the foundation, I have no idea but it's everywhere. I was digging out a stump one day and found a hand forged head of a spade that must have weighed 15lb.s. The pictures below are of a hand made have a heart trap and a butter crock that has the date 1885 on the bottom of it.
[url][/url]

[pqtex]

The pictures below are of a hand made have a heart trap and

That reminds me of a minnow trap my father made. The trap was placed in shallow water and the minnows could swim in but not out. The minnows were collected and then used for bait for bigger fish.

[melissakd]

Terrific finds! Can't believe the coin; DH would die of envy. Love the trap.

DH found and excavated both outhouses, plus some fill on top of the second one from when the garage floor was poured (couple of 1920s license plates, nearly all rust, and a Chero Cola bottle from that decade). Probably a five-gallon bucket of shards from each privy.

Also found around the place: Half a plate from the 1930s in the cellar, carpenter's level and portraits of a lady and a gentleman on metal, apparently 1870s. I posted some pics here and there but life intervened before I could catalog it all properly.

MKD

[KristenS]

When digging up the bed for our 100 Dutch tulip bulbs, I found:

- a letter S and number 4, sans probable magnet backings
- an Africanesque wood knick-knack of three figures with arms intertwined
- a Canadian penny (worth about 2 cents these days!)
- one small plastic dinosaur

I'm sure these date back at least, oh, ten... maybe even 15 years. They support the other evidence that we've found that suggests children once lived in the house. Namely, scribbles and names written in red magic marker all over the wood trim in the house.

Hooray for PO's treasures!

[RioG]

Old silver fork... bits of pottery... a very large bone of some sort (assume cow). Something that looks like a bell that's all seized up. A skeleton key.

[angolito]

did that work?

[melissakd]

It did not. Maybe this will:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sha ... arer-_-Top

or this



Okay, I think I have an idea. I think you can't post a slideshow as an image. Wherever the photo is stored as a photo, which I guess is where you got it to make a slideshow, go back and get it from that place and post it as an image. Not sure but hope that works. The URL works as a link, but the photo is tantalizingly small...I wanna read all the labels on the bottles! BTW we had a rat too but we never saw it, only smelled it.

MKD