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 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!

A Virginia Confederate in Saxapahaw, NC

Hey everyone!  I finished up work today, and had about an hour before I could bring in and feed the horses.  So I asked my wife where I should detect around the farm, because whenever she tells me where to go I end up finding something cool.  "Well I can't now" she said "you've put me on the spot!"  But I pressed the issue, and she told me to head over towards a particular fenceline.  I had found one old coin there in the past (a no-date shield nickel), but it was mixed in with a LOT of ring-style pull tabs.  Sure enough, my hour flew by and my pouch filled with aluminum trash.

I put the detector up, brought in the horses, and passed out hay and grain.  Emily was just finishing up her lesson, and I mentioned in passing that the spot had been a bust.  "I have 15 minutes of light left" I told her "so pick another spot, and make it a good one!"

So I headed out, trying to see how many targets I could recover before the sun dipped below the trees.  The answer turned out to be just one, because what came out of the red clay stopped me in my tracks.  A two piece brass button, which I assumed was likely another Bingham Uniform button.  That's not to say Bingham buttons are common, but the close proximity to the school made it plausible.

I ran inside to clean my find, and was floored by what I saw - Civil War era Virginia State Seal button!!  The device (front image) of the button shows the figure of Virtus standing over the body of a slain tyrant, the Virginia state seal.  Above the seal reads "VIRGINIA", and below "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS" the Virginia motto meaning "Death Always to Tyrants."  

The back of the button is even more fascinating.  The backmark reads "Kent Paine & Co. Richmond" in a depressed channel.  It was made for a unified Virginia unit prior to the outbreak of the war, but pre-war state seal buttons were, of course, used throughout the war.  The shank is bent, but still intact.  The really unique thing about this particular button is a few strands of the original attachment thread, preserved in the thick clay for all these years.  This is something I have seen on dug buttons in the past, but it is an extreme rarity.  For the collectors out there, this button is Albert's reference VA13A and Tice's reference VA222A3, and a non-dug example can be seen here: front and back.

I know that troops from both sides marched within a few miles of here in 1865, but some of my area metal detecting finds lead me to suspect at least some troops moved across my farm specifically.  This Virginia seal button is a strong piece of evidence in support of this theory.  I feel very blessed to have recovered it, especially here on my own land.  And I'm thrilled to be able to share it with all of you!  Thanks for looking, I hope you enjoyed the story, and God bless!