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: 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!