Trigger Guards: The Civil War in Bentonville and the Revolution in Saxapahaw

Yesterday was Black Friday, but instead of going out shopping, I took a trip down to Bentonville, NC with some friends to go detecting.  We tried a new field today that we just recently received permission to search.  It was the site of a Union artillery position during the three day Battle of Bentonville, March 19-21st, 1865.  You can see the results of my previous trips to Bentonville here and here.

We had hoped this field would produce, and we certainly weren't disappointed!  We recovered a lot of great history in a day, including knapsack pieces, horse tack, cartridge box finials, and of course, a number of bullets.  The find of the day was made by my good friend Jim, who recovered a great brass fuse adapter from a Union Hotchkiss artillery shell, shown above.  It's a great find, and locating at a Union artillery position during the battle made it even that much better.  Congrats, Jim!

Here are my finds for the day.  Some are the standard finds from most Civil War sites - brass grommets and rivets, unidentified period brass, and melted lead.  The two mushroomed bullets are particularly interesting, and were found in very close proximity to one another.  I also recovered my first Williams Cleaner bullet that has the base still attached.

One of the 58 caliber three-ring bullets is particularly interesting, and the first such bullet I have personally recovered.  It shows a bore hole from an "extracting worm", a corkscrew device used for pulling bullets out of the barrel of a gun.  This would have been done to remove a bullet stuck in the barrel, or to unload a loaded firearm to make it safe to handle without firing the bullet.

My best find of the day was the front half of a rifle trigger guard.  I believe it to be from a pattern 1853 Enfield rifle, based on the location of the hole used for a rifle sling attachment.  The Enfield was used by both sides during the war, and was the second most widely used infantry weapon.  An Enfield rifle from the Charelston Museum is shown below

Coincidentally, I just recovered another interesting trigger guard near Saxapahaw about a week ago.  I found it during one of my shorter hunts on Saxapahaw Bethlehem Church Rd.  It was the only good find that day, and at the time I hadn't yet identified it, so I held off on posting.  Since then I have identified it as an acorn finial from the front of a much earlier trigger guard.  Such finials were common on English fowler guns in the mid-late 1700's.  Several colonial era flat buttons have previously been found in the area, which also date to the same time period.

English fowlers were a type of smooth-bore flintlock musket.  They had very long barrels, and were designed for hunting game birds.  Now of course I can't say for certain that this particular gun was used in the American Revolution.  English fowler guns were, however, used during the war.  The British were typically issued Brown Bess flintlock muskets, though officers were meant to supply their own firearms, which have used such an acorn trigger guard as seen on English fowlers.  The Americans, on the other hand, pressed whatever weapons available into service.  A hunting rifle of this sort would certainly have been used by "citizen soldiers" going into battle.  Below is an original example of a 1770's-1780's musket, believed to have been used during the American Revolution, which bears a similar acorn motif trigger guard finial.  I can't say whether or not my trigger guard piece came from a musket used in the Revolution, but it is of the time period, and was found on muskets that were used during the war.

My Unfortunate Halloween Hunt

Reading back through the blog, it may seem like I get something great every time I go out - but I'm not always quite so fortunate.  Today's Halloween hunt was a perfect example.  I started off with several potential spots in mind in the general area of Swepsonville.  The first was a property on the Haw River that I had recently tracked down which was once the site of the Gilbreth Bridge river crossing.  Readers from Graham may know of Gilbreath Street, which at one time continued straight to the haw from the west to the bridge.  I found a reference to the bridge in documents pertaining to the Kirk-Holden War of 1870, and it appears on the Spoon map of 1893, though the bridge no longer stands.  The area around the bridge is now pasture, perfect for metal detecting.  I introduced myself to the homeowner, who unfortunately wouldn't let me detect the area at this time, but may contact me in the future through the blog.

I drove to my backup spot, a field that I have been waiting to be cleared for many months now.  Much to my dismay, the field was still grown up, so I had no luck there either.  On the way to site number three I had a black cat dart in front of my car.  Now I'm not a superstitious person, but I should have taken it as a sign!

I had received a tip on a house which was supposedly built over top of an old baseball field.  I secured permission to hunt the filed around the house with ease, and quickly started pulling coins.  Unfortunately, they were all modern 18 coins for $.60, and not so much as a wheat penny.  I made one more stop on the way home, a homeowner that has let me detect several times and I've never come away empty handed.  Sadly, there was no answer - out doing Halloween festivities, I'm sure.

Despite all of that, I still had a good time.  It's about the looking just as much as the finding!!  Anyways, I hope you all have a safe and happy Halloween!  And don't forget to drop me a line with any more tips for new sites or interesting history in the area.  Until next time, thanks for reading, and God Bless!

Cannonball Fragment Update

I was finally able to get a positive ID on the large iron piece found at the Battle of Bentonville a few days ago.  We suspected that it might be a cannonball fragment, but there was one thing that concerned me about it.  The fragment I found is obviously rounded on the outside, but the inside doesn't have the same curvature.  This is unlike most cannonball fragments I have seen in the past, which have a uniform thickness and equal curvature on the inside and out as seen in the cannonball example below.  The center would be filled with gunpowder, and a timing fuse placed in the hole would cause the cannonball to explode, sending several large pieces into the massed enemy soldiers.

In late 1862, Confederate Capt. John W. Mallet designed a new type of "internally segmented" exploding round ball which used a polygonal cavity inside the ball instead of a spherical one.  When the fuse ignited the gunpowder, the shell would fragment at the weak points in the shell wall producing a larger number of smaller fragments, which was meant to increase the damage to enemy troops.  The resulting fragments are rounded on the outside, but flat on the inside.  Each fragment will have a uniform shape determined by the geometry of the polygonal cavity, the most common being a pentagon shaped fragment.  This is the fragment I found, and a cross-section of a complete polygonal cavity shell is shown below.

The polygonal cavity cannonball was used exclusively by the Confederacy, and is fitting with the location it was found - alongside a line of fired confederate bullets at the site of a Union advance.  This type of shell was used only later in the war, and was the most commonly used Confederate cannonball in the 1865 Carolinas campaign.  Recall that the battle of Bentonville took place in March of 1865.  The complete ball measured 4.62 inches in diameter, and would have been fired from a smoothbore Napoleon 12 Pounder cannon, shown below.

With all of that history in technical terms above, it's sometimes necessary to step back from the academics and think about a recovered artifact in more personal, human terms.  It's hard to image the devastation that such a large exploding fragment could cause to the human body.  It's hard to imagine the fear of stepping out from the woodline and walking across that field, shoulder to shoulder, with rifles firing at you and shells exploding overhead.  It's hard to imagine the courage, on both sides of the battle, of risking and often losing life and limb to defend what you believe is right.  It is hard to imagine that this piece of iron which I hold in my hand was fired with the intention of taking another human life, and it is entirely possible that it was successful in doing so.  It is truly a humbling experience.

Special thanks to TheCannonballGuy over at TreasureNet for help in researching this article.

Detecting Report: Back to Bentonville Oct 21

John, Brad, and I went back to the Battle of Bentonville to detect a few sites where John has permission to search.  We had a really great day with a lot of fun and some really cool finds.

We started off at a site we searched on our last trip down, but a different section of the field.  John started off the day with a fired Confederate Sharps bullet right out of the gate.  I called it a three-ringer in the video, but when he cleaned it up, it turned out to be a sharps.  John also got the base from a Williams cleaner bullet from this field.  I recovered two bullets there, the first being a fired and slightly deformed 58 caliber three ring Minie ball.  The second was a really nice one - a fired Confederate Enfield bullet that struck something hard straight on.  I also found a small roundball from a buck-and-ball shot, and a large piece of iron that may or may not be an artillery fragment.  You can see it much better at the end of the video, and any thoughts on that are welcomed.

What I find most interesting is not just what we found, but how those objects support our understanding of what went on in that field almost 150 years ago.  Union forces were moving in to attack the Confederates, and would have emerged from the woods and advanced across the open field.  In the open, they took Confederate fire from the opposite woodline.  This Union advance was where we were detecting yesterday, and found several fired and struck Confederate bullets.  As the Union troops moved across the middle of the field, they dropped several of their own unfired bullets, either from a pouch as they got ammunition to load or dropped by a casualty of Confederate fire.  This middle section of the field is where we detected last time, and recovered several unfired 58 three-ringers.

After lunch we went on to a second site, where John believed there may have been a small camp.  We knew it would be either feast or famine at that spot, and unfortunately we came up empty.  So we tried a third and final site that we knew would produce better, a peanut field where the plants had recently been dug up to dry.  Detecting in between the rows, we did manage some nice finds.  Brad got his bullet for the day, a fired three ringer.  John got a nice variety of finds, including a 69 round ball, a fired Confederate Enfield bullet, and an 1888 Indian Head penny.  I picked up two more dropped three ringers in this field as well. 

I also got a small lead piece there, which at the time I believed was a carved bullet.  It turns out that what I have is the finial used for closing a leather percussion cap box.  Union issued percussion cap boxes came with brass finials, but many confederates used lead finials.  I've included a picture of a confederate percussion cap box for sale at www.jsmosby.com which shows how the lead finial attached to the cap box.  I really like this find a lot!

We had a great time preserving some history, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it!  Until next time, thanks for reading, and God bless.

Detecting Saxapahaw: 200 Year Old Tombac Button

Hey ya'll!  Since finding an old building site with James on October 8th and detecting it with the Raleigh boys on October 15th, I just had to go back to see what else was beneath the earth!  So I went out there today to see what I could find, and came up with some neat relics to share with you.  The best of the bunch actually came from a mini-hunt when I tried to search the area yesterday evening, but the cows decided they wanted the spot and sent me packing. 

The best find is a large flat button, slightly bigger than a half dollar.  It's made of a material called "tombac", a brass alloy made with a large amount of copper and 5-20% zinc.  The result is a highly durable button which resists corrosion.  The back has a raised cone shaped base where a copper or iron shank would have been soldered on.  Tombac buttons were used for both military and civilian purposes, and were mass produced in the late 1700's.  To think, a 200+ year old button just a few inches down in a cattle field near Saxapahaw!  I love this hobby!  I know both the Morrows and the McIvers lived quite close to this field in the late 1700's, and could account for its origins.

In addition to the pictures, I also created a video of today's search.  I did something a little bit different, so I hope you like it!  Let me know what you think in the comments section below!  Thanks for looking, and God Bless!

Detecting Report: Saxpahaw October 15th

Friday's outing was full of history and excitement, but the finds came up a bit short.  Thankfully I had a bit more luck yesterday.  I will be carpooling with three of my friends from the Triangle Relic Recovery club to the November "Diggin' in Virginia" relic hunt, so we wanted to get together for some detecting time before we go.  Dwight, Josh, and Jim drove in from the Raleigh/Durham area to detect the Webb farm and several adjoining properties.  Josh and Jim were both testing out new detectors which are meant to help with the highly mineralized Virginia soil, and while the red clay around Saxapahaw isn't quite as bad as Culpepper, it's probably the best local approximation.

We started off on the area of the Webb Farm where most of the Civil War era relics have been found.  The good news is that I was apparently quite thorough in my previous searches here.  The bad news is that even with four of us (including a TDI and a GPX4500) we had trouble finding signals.  It was still fun, though, comparing the signals we did get and finding out all the ways iron can trick your detector!

The next spot was on a cattle farm on Sax Beth Church Rd. where several other friends and I had previously stumbled upon a patch of coins ranging from 1904 to 1920.  The last ones to come out of the area had been quite deep, and almost didn't register on my DFX.  I was curious to see what the other detectors could find, and sure enough Jim's GPX was the only one to snag another coin - his very first "V" or Liberty nickel.  It's also the oldest coin of the day, produced between 1883 and 1913, but 80+ years in the ground rendered the date unreadable.

We then moved over to the spot James and I had discovered on October 8th.  There were considerably more targets in this area, and we all walked away with some misc brass.  Over the course of the day Dwight pulled a very cool pocket knife, and Josh recovered a brass bridle buckle and some other horse tack.  I dug another 19th century brass toe plate near the building spot, my second from this area.

I'm very pleased with my find of the day, though.  As I removed the dirt from within the plug of an iffy signal, I saw a small silvery disc.  Honestly, my first thought was "Dang, just a dog tag!" before I realized what it was.  It's a 1927 Standing Liberty quarter, my first ever recovered with a metal detector.  This is a coin I've been wanting to check off the list for a long time now, and I'm very happy to have found it!  I know there's more good things to find at that spot, and I'm excited to go back once we get some more rain.

Thanks again for Josh, Dwight, and Jim for coming down, I had a great time, and I hope you did too!  We'll have to get out together more often, it was a blast!

In Search of "Pioneer" William Bradshaw

In response to my call for old property to search, I got an email from Lane Watson of Lane Watson Photography, telling me to check out some old farmland near his home.

Rewind all the way back to 1804.  Thomas Bradshaw drafted a deed for his son, who genealogists have taken to calling "Pioneer William".  The deed transferred 100 acres on Meadow Creek in Haw River, bordering the lands of Jonathan Thompson and William Bradshaw Sr. (Thomas' brother), from Thomas Bradshaw to his son Pioneer William.

William (1783-1852) is listed in his father's household in the 1810 census prior to serving as a teamster in the war of 1812.  He is then listed as head of household in the 1820 census.  During this time, William had a son (also named William) and was likely wed, although there is no record of the union.  William's second marriage was to Elinor “Nelley” Turner in 1823.  Nelley passed away in 1825, probably in childbirth with her son (confusingly enough, also named William).  Pioneer William then married Mary Ann Brewer in 1827.  Their eldest son was named Thomas Lafayette Bradshaw, born in 1935.

1850 Census showing William, Mary Ann, and Thomas Lafayette Bradshaw

Thomas L. Bradshaw did not pass away until 1914, and thus his name appears on the 1893 Spoon Map of Alamance County, near Meadow Creek and bordered by the lands of various Bradshaw's and Thompson's.  Not far from where this house appears on the map, the Bradshaw Family Cemetery lies nestled amongst the trees, containing the final resting place of William Bradshaw and his second and third wives, along with two of William's sons killed fighting for the Confederacy and several other family members.  I believe that Pioneer William lived here prior to 1825 (and perhaps his parents as well, going back before the 1804 deed).

William Luther Spoon Map of Alamance County, 1893

It was here that I was being asked to investigate today with modern technology to search for traces of the past.  I started off around a depression where an outbuilding likely stood, but besides some age-whitened lead, came up empty handed.  I had intended to search some of the fields, but tall grass made it difficult to get good depth.  None-the-less, I recovered a number of fishing related items along the edge of the pond.

At this point, I asked for (and was given) permission at a neighboring house, which was believed to have been built around the turn of the century.  The results here included a few wheatback pennies going back to the 1920's, a chipped glass marble, and a large number of cut nails dating from the mid-late 19th century.  I'm unsure if this was the original home site of T. L. Bradshaw (or Pioneer William), but the topography and the age of the trees suggest it is plausible.  The Spoon map is inconclusive in this regard - the house on the map appears further south east in relation to Salem Church Road, but it lines up with the standing ca. 1900 house in relation to Meadow Creek.  I hope to obtain permission to search the area south-east of the standing ca. 1900 house in the future, to determine if it is a possible location for Pioneer William's house.

While I wasn't able to locate anything to date the site specifically, I still consider the day a success.  I got out to enjoy the beautiful weather, added a few things to my collection, and met some great people.  I was also able to learn more about our locale history, and share that with you all.  I'd like to thank Lane for emailing me the tip, and Terri Bradshaw O'Neill for the research help.  With the landowners' permissions, I will certainly be back to investigate this area, because there is a lot of ground left to cover.  Hopefully someday I will be able to prove the location of the original settlement of Pioneer William Bradshaw.

Thanks for reading, and God bless!

Local History Notes

Hey everyone!  Today's post will be a few updates for our local readers, while tomorrow I will have an article geared more towards detector enthusiasts. 

I'd first like to extend a huge CONGRATULATIONS to The Haw River Ballroom for being given the Carraway Award of Merit by Preservation North Carolina.  Heather and Tom have done an amazing job restoring the dye room at the Saxapahaw river mill into a simply gorgeous music hall and event space, while still keeping the heritage of the historic building.  This was no easy feat, but they have really done a fabulous job.  And if that isn't good enough, the blended drinks at the ballroom's coffee shop Cup 22 are top notch, so be sure to stop in and have one!  Congrats again!

I'd like to extend a special thank you to Doug Williams, a resident of Saxapahaw who has helped me researching the William P. Morrow House just outside Saxapahaw.  You'll be hearing much more about this house in future updates as I feature some of my past finds.  Doug was essential in restoring the circa 1855 house, and in the process came into possession of a book called The Book of Poetry: Illustrated with Engravings on Wood, published by the Presbyterian Board of Publications in the 1850's.  The book was inscribed by Martha A. Morrow in 1856, and research has confirmed that she was attending Edgeworth Female Seminary in Greensboro at the time.  Doug kindly allowed me to take the book to the UNC library system for preservation.  They were very interested in it, and I recently heard back that it has been accepted into the prestigious North Carolina Collection library.  The NC Collection has been instrumental in much of my research of local history, and it feels good to be a part of giving back to them.  Thank you again, Doug, for contributing to our public resource for historic preservation!

It seems like web traffic is picking up a bit, so once again I'd like to invite you all to join the Detecting Saxapahaw facebook page.  Also, don't forget that I can't find old relics without old locations - so if you own older properties in central North Carolina or know someone who does, and would like to talk about having that history featured here, feel free to email me!

Detecting Report: Battle of Bentonville

Yesterday I took a trip with some of my detecting friends John, Bubba, and the other Tony to a site near the Battle of Bentonville.  The battle took place over three days in March of 1865, the last major battle between General Sherman of the Union Army and General Johnston of the Confederacy.  It involved some 80,000 men with over 400 killed and 2800 wounded.  Johnston retreated from the battle, and failed in achieving a critical victory against the much larger Northern force.  He surrendered his army to General Sherman at Bennett Place near Durham just a little over a month later.

Despite some technical difficulties (my White's DFX is now in the shop for repairs), we had a great day and pulled some nice dropped bullets and worked camp lead.  Check out the video of the day.  We also had out monthly meeting of the Triangle Relic Recovery club in Raleigh after our trip.  I'm pleased to have won the "best finds" award this month for best coin (186X Nickel Three Cent) and best relic (I'll be doing a blog post on this one in the future, it's one of my best so far!).  My detecting partner Brad also won the "best display" category for the month with a truly impressive amount of historic finds including a beautiful Federal army cavalry spur, featured here.

Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoyed!  And if you really enjoyed it, please join our fan page on Facebook!

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! 

Featured Find: A pair of 3's

Hey everyone!

I received my order of new coin cases from CoinWorld.com today, including
specialty cases for two of my most unique coin finds which I’ve decided to
share with you!  Ever needed to buy a postage stamp, and wished you had a
single coin for the purchase?  No?  Me either, but that was the unique
origin of the three-cent coin.

(Photo credit PCGS CoinFacts)

The first US three-cent coin was produced in 1851 as a result of the change
of the postage rate to three cents, and the need for more
small-denominational coins.  The three-cent silver (sometimes called a
“trime”) was the lightest of all US coins, and smallest diameter non-gold
US coin.  Original composition of the coin was 75% silver to discourage
melting for bullion (a fairly common practice recently with modern silver
coins due to high silver prices).  It was increased to 90% silver in 1854
to encourage greater circulation.  Silver three-cent coins were produced
from 1851-1873 with a total mintage of 42.7M.

(Photo credit PCGS CoinFacts)

Economic conditions during the Civil War lead to widespread hoarding of
gold and silver coins.  One of the government’s responses was to issue a
nickel-copper three-cent coin in 1865.  Intended only as a stopgap measure
until hoarding ended, nickel three-cent coins were produced from 1865 to
1889 with a total mintage of 31.3M with more than 75% of those produced
prior to 1870.

My first three-cent coin was an 1853 silver from Victory Calls (the old
Webb Farm) on Saxapahaw Bethlehem Church Rd. in February.  This month I
was lucky enough to find the nickel three-cent at another historic farm on
the same road!   From a detecting standpoint, these are very rare coins
indeed, for a variety of reasons.  First, both have very low mintage
compared to many other coins (compare: 245M seated dimes, 500M barber
dimes, 1800M quarters in 1965 alone).

Both three-cent coins also have other limitations that make them
particularly difficult to detect.  For the silver trime, the problem is
one of size.  Being both smaller than a dime and considerably thinner,
they can be very difficult for a detector to pick up.  Even more difficult
to recover is the three-cent nickel, not due to size (it is the same size
as a US dime) but metal composition.  Silver is a high conductivity
material, and gives a signal on the high end of the scale where not many
trash targets appear (White’s VDI #’s 70-95).  The copper-nickel alloy, on
the other hand, appears very low on the scale where it can mimic many
other materials and trash targets.  (This is one reason many detectorists
find so many more pennies/dimes/quarters than nickels).  Being smaller
than a US nickel, the three-cent nickel shows up even lower at the bottom
of the scale (White’s VDI #’s 13-16).  In a trashy location with many
targets, this coin would be extremely easy to miss.  I feel incredibly blessed 
to have found both types of this very rarely recovered coin.

And so, without further ado, my new coin cases:

Welcome to Detecting Saxapahaw!

Hey there, and welcome to Detecting Saxapahaw!

This blog is dedicated to preserving the history of Saxapahaw, NC and surrounding cities and towns through the documentation of research and recovered artifacts.  My name is Tony Stevenson, Saxapahaw resident since 2008.  I had used a metal detector in the past to search for coins and jewelry on beach vacations, but it never occurred to me that it could be used to foster a connection with our history.  That realization came when my wife and I purchased Victory Calls Stables three years ago.  We purchased the property with no indication of what had been there previously (the house was built in 1970), but the sheer magnitude of the massive oak trees caught my interest.  How old were they?  What might they have seen?  Who walked under the expansive canopies?

I began my search for the past at the UNC’s North Carolina Collection reading room, where the curator retrieved a large map drafted by William Luther Spoon in 1893 (there will certainly be a future blog post on the Spoon maps of Alamance County).  It didn’t take long to locate our property, with a small black rectangle indicating a home site with the name “Miss. S. A. Webb.”

My research into the Webb family, a labor of love if there ever was one, has taken countless hours of library and internet research.  A summary of my Webb family biography, as well as a sneak peak of some of the artifacts I will be detailing on this blog, can be found at the Victory Calls website.  Webb family researchers are encouraged to contact me, as I have quite a bit more information and additional pictures which are not yet published on the internet.

I don’t remember exactly when my “ah-HA!” moment came with regards to metal detecting, but not long after I began researching I realized that I could go beyond reading about these individuals and search for an even more tangible connection.  I took my trusty Garrett GTA1000 Metal detector out into the fields around VCS, and the rest (if you’ll excuse the pun) is history.  I have since been a member of both the Triangle Relic Recovery club in Raleigh and the Old North State Detectorists club from Greensboro.  In 2010, I worked alongside professionals from the North Carolina Office of State Archeology and other volunteer detectorists in a systematic survey of the Alamance Battlegrounds historical site (I recovered the musket ball in the above photo from that battle).  I have been detecting at dozens of local historical sites, including homes, fields, churches, and even one private residence on the National Register of Historic Places.  I will be telling many of the stories of my favorite spots and most interesting finds over the coming weeks and months.

Please check back to this blog as I update with information about detecting finds and the people and places that have interacted with them (both present and past).  If you would like to learn about the art of metal detecting, let me know – I’m always looking for new hunting partners.  Some of my detecting colleagues will most certainly be featured in the future as guest bloggers or interviews.

Last but certainly not least, I can’t make exciting finds without exciting locations to find them.  If you live in central North Carolina and would like me to search for your property’s history, please contact me by email (tony@victorycallsridng.com) or through the Detecting Saxapahaw facebook group!  I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy my work.
Sincerely,
Tony Stevenson
Detecting Saxapahaw