In field find

The other day I stopped in the corn field to check if it was germinating yet after the nice rain we got. I looked down when I was maybe 50-60 feet into the field and I found an indian head penny face up from 1881. I can't help but wonder just how long its been out there, and what that penny could have bought way back then. And who dropped it? I'm thinking of cleaning it up to see exactly what condition its in.

It could have been my great or great great grandpa for all I know...

I also saw some fish (bull head maybe) in the creek I have to cross to get to another field we have. I've never before in my life seen any sign of fish in there.

Donovan from wisconsin[/quote]

Be careful cleaning that penny up. That could cause it to lose value.

I should have said get it wet to get the dirt off it. I know cleaning it can make it loose value.

Donovan from wisconsin

Amazing to find something like that when it's about the same color as the soil. Would be neat to see a picture.

Your corn hasn't come up yet? When is your frost free planting start?

I planted from May 20th to June 6, and all my corn is out of the ground. It's stressed from lack of rain, but it's all up. I wish I would have gotten it in about 20 days earlier like I should have. It would be chest high right now. Most of it is looking like "knee high by the fourth of July."

Hello Don:. I have an old railroad camp site located on my property and when I plowed it I turned up hundreds of bits & small pieces.. They were all poor, I guess, since I have not found anything of value. The rail line was built in the mid 1890s and I was the first to plow that spot up but it was known and used as a pasture. Even though nothing of value, it is still interesting to search the whole area. It seems they had a policy of breaking everything down into small pieces but just never know which day will be the lucky day..

were both sides in the same shape or was one in worse shape? bill

I wouldn't shine on it much, it might take away the value. Several years ago I was replacing the cut'n edge on a jd 644 loader, I found a liberty head nickel in the bucket, the company that owned the loader had just tore down an old house and cleaned up the property. Some of the liberty head nickels have sold for around five thousand, I expect mine is worth bout 4 cents.

I was in the Eastern part of NC last week working on a dozer where they had been clearing and grading for a large horse pasture. As I worked around the machine I kept seeing chips that I knew from past experience were created by hand flaking things like arrow heads, etc. I told the operatore what I was seeing and mentioned that I had never seen that many chips and not found an arrow or spear head. I asked if he had found anything but he said that he never really paid any attention to things like that but rather just pushed the dirt.

When I reached a stopping point on the first day I still had an hour or so of daylight left si I started looking around the truck. Took me about ten minutes to find a freshly broken spear head lying about 20 feet from the truck. About 30 minutes later I was looking around a big pile of top soil they had pushed up for future use and found what I swear looks like a tomahawk head. If it's not one then it's the closest thing I have ever found to one and has to be at least the beginnings of one.

Like you said, finding things from the past in the middle of what was nothing but several hundred acres of forest until it was cleared is amazing to me. How long has it lain there hidden. In your case possibly well over a hundred years, in mine a hundred years, two hundred years, possibly even more. I'd love to find a way to go back in time and be standing there watching when the item was lost, to be able to see what happened. Did it fall from someone's pocket, in the case of an arrow or spear head was it thrown at some animal that carried it away and died, or was it simply thrown away in favor of a new, better one. It would be an amazing journey to say the least........

When i was a kid we moved a lot of dirt out of our back yard for water flow and i found a 1943 (i think that is the year) silver penny . Looked like new I know they are not silver but how did it look so good after all those years? It was atleast 2 foot under the dirt.

My dad and I were walking along in a field when he spotted
an arrowhead....basically in the middle of nowhere.
One wonders if it has laid there hundreds of years or
thousands.
He also plowed up a pocket watch one time. Maybe some
previous farmer had a hole in his pocket while walking behind
a plow or maybe while walking through a field pitching
bundles.
Be neat to go back in time to see the moment they were
dropped and see what the country looked like at the time.

Looks like we think along the same lines. I'm afraid the only time travel we'll get to see is our own lives in slow motion.

back in 1959 Grandpa was plowing the potato patch for planting with the 9N when I spotted an object & picked up 1886 Indian head penny that had turned completely green. Showed it to Grandpa & he noticed it was the year he was born! Still got it as a memory of one of the most patient men to ever live. Or at least he allowed me to grow up.

I was looking for a property pin the other night and found a 1944 walking liberty half dollar about 2" under the dirt. I was using a metal detector. Also found the "guts out of a 1902 pocket watch. A gear had fallen out and that was what the metal detector picked up, showed up as gold....James

Planting corn 20 years ago, found a gold wedding ring. Talked to the people who owned before me, but no one missing a ring..

I have a spot on a quarter of land I farm that must have been a homestead farm. Always finding bits of depression glass and bricks cemented together.

> My dad and I were walking along in a field when he spotted
> an arrowhead....basically in the middle of nowhere.

My best find was a spear head. It's made from white flint which isn't from around this area. Mostly what we find here is small flint arrow broadheads (the size you would probably want for killing rabbits) made from local flint. This spear head is about 10 times the size. Looked it up on university websites and it looks like it was probably used for killing wooly mammoths 7-10 thousand years ago. I went back to the place in the field where I found it and looked around and it really puts the imagination into motion. It was right around where the field turns from sandy loam to clay gumbo, Maybe they were chucking spears at mammoths right at the edge of a lake at the time.

Coke might clean it, but don't use abrasives. eg steel wool etc.

When I was a kid I was walking across a field I found a Medallion from the Spanish American War. Grand Father took it to a museum they said it did not have any value. I put it up in a safe place. Where ever it is I guess it's still safe.
Ron

I've found knives that I lost a couple years before on the pastures... When I was a kid, the neighbor got me interested in arrowheads and I found a few, then was stationed in Missouri and a guy had a big place that he'd let me and another guy walk the fields... I found some really nice ones there and quite a few.... Practice wife relieved me of the burden of having them tho...... Have found a few things over here but mostly tools and no real arrowheads...

In the 60's I was told to cultivate a field of
corn with the Oliver 60. Always ready as a kid
to drive a tractor I jumped at the chance. Since
the field was right beside the road Grandad said
go Slow & do it right, it's beside the road.
After hearing that I knew, I'd never get the
chance to cultivate for him again if I screwed
up.. 1st gear near the road & 2nd gear after I
got out of seeing distance from Grandad. After
a few hours , man was this Boring!! I got off
the tractor in the back to relive Mother nature
& I stepped on a Spear Head, about 6" long &
Cole black, Was going to put in my frt pocket
& that God is cut me. So i placed it in the
Tractor tool box & continued on my task.. The
Very next day going to church, Grandad said the
field looked great & said Look there must be
a turtle down there in the corner of the field.
Then I remember, Grandad I found a Spear head
down there & put it in the tractor tool box.
I forgotten all about it.. We went to church
& Grandad assumed I missed the box & it fell
back onto the ground. We marched up the Oliver
& there in the box was the spear head. We
also saw that the same turtle was in the same
place in the field. Grandad said lets walk
up there & see what that is? The sun shone &
reflected off another Spear Head, that looks
the same as the first one I found, He say's
look We have a Pair!! they were about 40 feet
apart.. Was a great find & a fine Memory.
My sister & I mounted them on plywood, coverd
in green felt & then a 2" thick box with a
Glass front. Placed the other arrow heads that
grandad found over the years, along with some
old wrenchs that had turned up over the years.

We gave that to grandad on his 85th birthday
With lettering inside that said 60+ years of
farming. He displayed that on the Living room
wall & would often just stare at it. I supose
reminicing the events.. He never seen his 87th
Birthday, in the short time he had his
collection he would point it out to every
vistor as they walked in.. Most of his vistors
would hear the same story again & again, I
would love to hear him tell it to me, one
more time.......

RLA

We have a very old house on our property. I'm always finding pieces of glass, etc. around it. Never found anything of value, but its interesting to me.

We have a bottom field, adjoined by sloped fields,(now over grown) that for some reason has always produced pieces of plates and or cups, from some earlier era, late 1800's and up, I would find the pieces after tillage and put them in a coffee can like a puzzle, for many years, need to dump that can and see what I have, do recall finding adjoining pieces but in different years. It is kind of cool to ponder how the land was, forested and who used or lived there, nearby.

When we were kids, a friend and I could not stay out of old farm dumps, fields and woods etc., not sure what it was but it sure captures ones imagination.

On our old farm house lawn a big ole victorian mansion and 2 big hay barns, with a metal detector, a 1927 silver dollar and a 1914 quarter was found, plus all kinds of other farm related hardware.

I love rooting around old fence lines, obscure parts of the property where edges of fields meet hedge rows or swamp, often times you may find old dumps, I found 2 more here, there has to be 7 or 8 within the vicinity. I find and collect the old porcelain or ceramic insulators, which can be re-used and the various old barbed wire, and of course locust posts, some of which I have found completely intact, put one in the man cave to add to the clutter LOL, always thought one could be a little artistic and display an old fence line section. One of the best fines along fence lines here is old wire, stainless steel wire was prevalent, instead of galvanized, I roll it up for future use. Spring and fall are nice times to visit these places, by now the insects are too thick.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_steel_cent">1943 Steel Pennies</a> had a thick zinc coating (galvanization).

It always amazing me how there's so much old galvanized steel out there that's in perfect shape, but anything newer is rusted away. Look at all the old threshing machines that have been sitting outside since the 1940s and have no rust on the sheet metal.

About five years when I was deer hunting I dumped a nice buck out over the back field that we had chisel plowed earlier. I bent over to pick up my .35 Rem casing and right along side it was the most perfect indian arrowhead I had ever seen.

It's neat to find stuff like that. If only they could talk...

Strange that it was shiny. They are called the steel cent, I have 500 of them, 50 uncirculated, and some of the others are rusty.

My father found an artillery shell in the forty's. Its a parrot shell 6 inch and 100 pounds filled with grape shot and gunpowder.It was not near any battle sites or military bases.

James and I have often wondered what stories our vintage tractors could tell if they could talk.

Where we are in Southeastern NC along the Cape Fear River used to be ocean, so it is easy to find marine fossils in places where the bedrock is exposed (which is fairly common), but we recently did an erosion control project that required some deep digging and found a lot of fossilzed shark's teeth, walrus teeth, etc... A lot of spear points and a few small arrowheads have been found here and my grandfather found a tomahawk head on a farm he used to tend about 10 miles down river. For some reason, there have been many more spear points than small arrowheads found in our general area. There have also been minie balls and round balls about the size of a lemon found within a couple of miles of here but several miles apart. Some have been identified as Civil War relics, but who knows about the rest. Our family has been here since 1865 but I don't know much about who was here before except for two graves on the place from the 1780s. You can tell where old houses were at one time though. There are several places on the farm where you will plow up shards of blue and white pottery, pieces of glass and brick, etc... I've even found long buried parts of horseshoes and half of a forged axe head in the same place, so it lends me to think that place was used for blacksmithing at one time. It also was home to a tenant house once, and now is the site of my house, on a narrow strip between the edge of a field and the drop-off to the river swamp. We keep hoping to dig up some jars of 20 dollar gold pieces, but haven't had any luck there.

Years ago, when I lived in town, I tore down an old decrepid building on a lot next to our house. It looked like the perfect place for a garden, so I hired an old neighbor to plow it up for me. About where the old building was located, he hooked his plow on something and it made his old Fergy scratch and snort. I decided to dig up what I thought was a piece of the old building foundation. It turned out to be a beautiful old tombstone. It was perfectly inscribed "Harvey W. Johnson" and the date of death was around 1893. I don't know who Harvey was, but my son now owns that property, and Harvey's stone still stands in his memory.

Being the skinflint that I am, I told my wife that I was going to change my name to Harvey W. Johnson and she wouldn't have to shell out for a tombstone for me. The little details about dying in 1893 surely wouldn't matter to most folks. . .

Ah the penny. I've got 7 or 8 gallons of pennies that I've saved over the years. One gallon equals about $50. My life savings. . .

Skinflint Paul

(quoted from post at 09:55:15 06/22/12) James and I have often wondered what stories our vintage tractors could tell if they could talk.

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"we were always so happy and workin hard in our pretty colors...... then some dummy spilled the grreen and yeller paint on us........ been miserable ever since" :roll:

Sumpin like that???

Martin Marietta has a quarry in Fountain where they find the same kinds of things. I was working for a customer who was doing some drilling for them some years back where the majority of the overburden had been removed already. I looked around every chance I got, looking to find some fossile shark teeth, or something, but had no luck at all.

Also did alot of work for Hanson Aggrigates at their pit outside of Dunn up until a few years ago when they got themselves a new crane. Never found anything myself, in and around their pits, but a couple of arrowheads on the ground where they had recently cleared the brush away. Over the years the guys that worked there have found numerous pieces of petrified wood, some pieces were really large, at depths down around 45 feet or so. Around that region, from what we were told, they have sand on top, then a layer of blue mud a few feet thick, and then even more sand. Unfortunately they say it's not currently economical to get the sand out below the mud layer. With what they find on top of it I'd love to see what they might find down even a few more feet below the mud.....