The 2 Pit in One Short Day Attempt
01/09/2000
I awoke around 8 am Sunday morning and dragged myself out of bed knowing that my
digging partner would be showing up any time now for our second dig at a location about 100 yards from my home. Jason arrived a couple minutes later at my back door with his friend Bryan, whom I didn' t recognize in my typical half
conscious early morning state. I'll be down in a few minutes! I yelled. About 30 minutes later with a full grasp on reality and lots of extra clothing I headed across the still unfrozen tundra of Northern Indiana
that was my back yard and the surrounding neighborhood. I could see the home we were digging at after only a few strides. We dug a pit at this 1850 house a week earlier with some good finds, and had also probed another pit that we
felt could be older than the first. We would be testing this spot right away. With that in mind I started to feel some anticipation, I was ready to dig! When I arrived on the site, Jason and Bryan had already cut the
sod and were starting the test hole. I grabbed a shovel and started in while they took a breather. After taking out just a few shovels full, I started seeing the signs of a pit, ash and brick, a few pieces of glass, looked good. We took turns and went down a little deeper. It didn't take long to confirm this one, so we cut off the standard 4 * 4 area of sod around what we determined to be the center of the pit and continued the excavation. At
about 3 ft. we hit a solid layer of white ash with small rocks and bricks in the fill, we also started to come out with a few intact bottles. First was 2 amber Chemical bottles, BIM with some names on the bottom. In this layer we
also found a fancy amethyst shot glass in almost perfect condition, some canning jar lids, 2 doll legs( where's the rest of this doll? probably some sadistic little boy ripped the legs off his sisters dolly and threw them down
here.), a large milk glass bottle stopper, and other items and no name bottles too numerous to mention. At this point we started to hit a lot of rocks, including one in the very center of the pit about 4 ft. down that was huge. I
kept working around it on my turn and finally it budged. It took Bryan and I both in the hole to lift it out. Right after this I treed what appeared to be a large amber medicine in the west side of the hole. I brushed off the side
and writing appeared. Get the cam J I said, looks like a good one here. 
"Hmmm, not many large amber medicines in my collection and I've got first pick today ..."