 |
12/19/99 Dig Results 1850 house trip two
We were at this house bright and early the Sunday
morning following the three part mold hole that we hade excevated here to look for another pit. Several spots in the yard were probing promising so we were pretty sure that we would be into another good pit. The last
one that we had dug had a date range of mid 1870's to late 1880's so we knew that there was an older pit here. Rick started probing behind and around the pit that we had already excevated and I started probing
some of the other spots that had seemed interesting to us the week before. After about fifteen minutes of probing Rick yelled that he thought he might be onto one over behind the shed so I started over to check it out.
About half way there right in the middle of the backyard I stopped for some reason and stuck the probe into a spot that didn't look likely at all. "Jackpot, I've got it Rick" The spot I probed was a pit I had no
doubt. Rick came over and confirmed my statement and we broke out the tarps and started a test hole. We dug a three foot test hole with very little glass or other sign coming out but there was glass all the way down at
the bottom of the extremely small test hole and it was thin and extremely old... "Pontilled pit?" We decided to open it up to full size and excevate even though it seemed to be fairly empty. After removing the
sod and starting to square the hole up Rick came out with pieces of what had to be a huge bottle and it was pontilled and killer teal. After a while longer we retrieved the top and bottom of what had been an ancient killer
teal color water bottle. Mine and Ricks theory on the bottle is that it almost had to have been brought from overseas as we have seen nothing even similiar in this color. We cleared the hole down to the three foot layer
and squared it up and were into an ash layer but everything in it was busted and then "Bottom" "I don't think so" I said to Ricks statement. We were in nothing but solid sand and rocks and it seemed to be the end but I
wasn't buying it. After continuing into the hole Rick was pretty sure that we were at the bottom so I said "One way to find out" and sunk the shovel as deep as I could in one spot CRUNCH!!!!! came the sickening sound of
breaking glass. "Whoaa dude" Rick yelled. I think the sound had convinced him that we should pursue. The sandy cap was about a foot thick and we cleaned it off and were in pure glass.