Featured Find: Can you solve the mystery of Foster’s Cafe?

Hey everyone!  Today’s featured find comes from the Webb Farm on Saxapahaw Bethlehem Church Rd. (now Victory Calls Stables), and it’s a mystery that has nagged me since I started detecting here.  It’s a small copper coin-like token, about the size of a nickel.  The back is plain, and the front read’s “Foster’s Cafe" around a letter “F” punchout.  I’ve searched, but haven’t found any reference to this token online.

Now had I just found the one token, I would probably write it off as a neat unknown find, and not give it too much more thought.  But then I found more.  Lots more.  Nearly thirty of them, all from the same farm field but spread out over several acres.  To be fair, most were found within maybe a half acre, but that’s still a sizable area.

What could they be?  It has been suggested that they were produced for the modern Foster’s Market Cafe in Chapel Hill, but I think if this were the case I would likely have found some reference to them online.  The best lead I have to go on came from the Alamance County Register of Deeds.

When the last of the Webb family, Capt. Sam Webb, died in 1929, the farm was left to his adopted son William Talbert.  William sold the property that same year to Richard Freeman Isley and his wife Vivian Foster Isley.  The land was sold in 1934 to Vivian's father, Charles Foster, owner of Foster's Hosiery Mill.  The land remained in his possession until 1947.  Could this be the “Foster” connection in “Foster’s Cafe"?

There were several periods of US history during which trade tokens saw increased usage.  These included “hard times” tokens issued during silver hoarding in the 1830’s, as well as patriotic small change tokens issued during the Civil War.  The heyday of token use in the US came from the 1870’s to early 1930’s, when a surge of small businesses in rural areas created a demand for advertising and merchandise trade tokens.  The decline of these tokens began with the Great Depression through the 1940's and 50's.  Below is an excellent example of a trade token from the Melville Drug Co. in Mebane dating to the 1920's, recovered by my friend Brad.

So it is possible that the Foster’s who owned this land from 1929-1947 were the connection to these mysterious Foster’s Cafe tokens?  Without some further evidence of either the restaurant or the tokens themselves, their origin and age will remain as mysterious as how so many became scattered across a rural Alamance County field.  But perhaps some of my readers may be able to assist – if you have any information about Foster’s Cafe of Alamance County, NC please let me know in the comments, on our facebook group, or by email.  I am in contact with a token researcher, and will keep you posted on what we find out!

Thanks for reading, and God bless!

Detecting Report: Saxapahaw and Mebane, Sept 22

Hey everyone!

I decided to head out today to a section of the Webb Farm at Victory Calls where I had found some older relics, but the ground has been so dry lately.  We finally got some rain yesterday and today, which really helps loosen up the clay and increase detection depth.  I only found a few new targets in the area, but one of them turned out to be this great 1844 large cent!

These larger pennies are nearly the size of a US half-dollar, and were the standard size before 1857.  They were replaced by the short-lived Flying Eagle cent (1856-1858) and the Indian Head penny (1859-1909), both the size of our smaller modern penny.  The change came as a result of complaints about the unwieldiness of the larger coins in volume, as well as increasing copper prices in the 1850's.  Increasing copper prices would again affect the penny in 1982 when the coin composition was changed to zinc with a thin copper coating.  The ground is not kind to copper coins around here, so I've also included a picture of what this coin ought to look like, courtesy of coinauctionshelp.com.

Not long after finding the cent, I got a call from some of my detecting friends, Brad and Bubba, from Mebane.  They also wanted to take advantage of the rain, so we headed off to a spot in the woods near Mebane.  This site has produced numerous Bingham School uniform buttons in the past, so that was the goal for the day.  The Bingham School was a preparatory school for boys which operated near my farm in Saxapahaw from 1844-1864, and near Mebane from 1865-1891.  I will do a much more detailed post on Bingham sometime in the future, including my uniform button collection.

Again I didn't dig many targets, but I did pull a Bingham School script-letter cuff button.  It's in absolutely TERRIBLE condition, and really I could only ID it from the construction and the filigrees on the ends of the letter "B".  That said, I was still extremely happy to have one of these rare buttons, as it is my first BS cuff button with script style lettering.

Brad was called away, so Bubba and I hit one last spot, also in the woods.  We managed to check off a few of the "most common finds" from my previous post - shotgun shells, part of a pocketwatch case, the front plate from a large lock, and even a complete harmonica reed. 

Overall, this was a fabulous day of detecting, good finds and good friends.  I'll leave you with a short video of the two best finds of the day as they come out of the ground for the first time in more than a century.  Be sure to sign up for the facebook group to stay up to date on the latest finds, history, and detecting articles.  Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoyed!