Detecting Saxapahaw is going "Diggin' in Virginia"!!!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately.  I have gotten out for a few short hunts, and found some more neat things to show you, I just haven't had to time to post them yet.  I'll get around to it before the end of the month, though!

Right now I'm gearing up for the "Diggin' in Virginia" three-day invitational hunt.  I was fortunate enough to be selected for the event, which will include seminars on Civil War history, advances in metal detector technology and techniques, and of course three days of metal detecting on hundreds of acres of prime Civil War territory (battle sites and long-term camps).  Just to be clear, all the hunt sites are private land with owners permission, as always.  To say I'm excited would be an understatement - I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve!

I leave bright an early with several guys from the Raleigh detecting club.  I'll try to keep you posted, if not via blog posts, then smaller updates on the Facebook page.  Wish us luck!

Detecting the vineyards, and a Tarheel Confederate in Saxapahaw

Hey everyone!  I got an email in response to my call for old sites from the owners of Benjamin Vineyards asking if I would like to search their property on Whitney Road.  It was once farmland belonging to a prominent local doctor, Dr. McPherson, who lived very near by.  It appears on the 1893 map of Alamance County as belonging to the Stockard family.  It became a vineyard in 2002, and now sells local wines and hosts vineyard tours, wine tastings, and private events.

I spent several hours roaming the property, looking for any signs of significant activity.  Unfortunately I didn't stumble upon any hotspots, and the finds were limited to bullet casings and shotgun shells (although some of the shells were manufactured over a century ago!).  Just the same, the weather was amazing, and the scenery couldn't have been prettier.  Strolling through the rows of grape vines and around the scenic landscape was a meditative experience, and one I'm sure I would have missed out on if not for this great hobby.  A special thank you goes out to the owners of Benjamin Vineyards for the kind invitation to their property.

After returning home and finishing the rest of my daily "to do's", there was still a little bit of daylight remaning, and I decided to use it up detecting around Victory Calls Stables.  I detected on the half of the farm where most of my CW relics have come from, including last month's Civil War era Virginia state seal button.  A detecting partner of mine also recovered a North Carolina state seal button from a neighboring property.

I was having trouble finding targets that weren't iron (and dug some of those for good measure), when I had an epiphany. Several of my period finds have come from the area around a specific set of fencelines. And while I've detected hard all around them, I've never gotten right under the fence. So I shut off the electric top strand and worked my way along the fenceline.  Sure enough, I got a weak signal.  I moved some clay and it got stronger. Using a pinpointer and hand digger to avoid scratching whatever it might be, I carefully removed the clay to reveal a flatbutton with no shank, typical of the 1800-1860's timeframe.

I instantly noticed that this particular button was actually convex in shape.  The next thing I noticed was that it had some design on the front.  I knew what I was hoping for (having seen this button during my research), and brushed the front of the button to reveal a circle with the letters "NC".

What I was holding is known as a North Carolina Sunburst button, used on uniforms of NC troops during the Civil War.  It's a "local" button, a term used to describe buttons made in the South during the War.  This is in contrast to many pre-war buttons that continued to see use, such as the Virginia state seal button I found nearby.  They were crudely made one piece stamped copper buttons, with soldered shanks.  The solder joints were usually poor, and frequently failed, so finding one with an intact shank is nearly impossible.  Original solder marks can be seen on the back of the button, along with a weak impression of the stamped device.  This makes the second Confederate button from my own farm, and third from these two properties.

I feel once again blessed and humbled to be given to oportunity to recover another rare piece of our state's history so close to home.  As always, feel free to email me with anything you would like to see featured here, or any tips for old sites in the area, or leave a comment on the facebook page.  Thanks for checking out the blog and in advance for any comments you may have.

Detecting in Saxapahaw: Buckles, buttons, coins, and ... peacocks?

Following yesterday's fun but less-than-successful Halloween hunt, I really wanted to get out there and try again.  I went down closer to Saxapahaw proper to detect the Buckner Farm on Sax Beth.  The property is a North Carolina "century farm", or a property actively farmed by the same family for more than 100 years.  It appears on an 1893 map of Alamance County as part of the Newlin farms, who are of course counted among the founding fathers of Saxapahaw.

Both my detecting partner Brad and myself have searched this property in the past, but the good finds just kept on coming today!  The oldest finds for the day came from the same hole (a note for the new detectorists - always always check you hole before replacing the sod!).  The first one out of the ground was a flat button without the shank, typical of the 1800-1860 timeframe.  The second find is a really nice small buckle.  Both tines are still intact, and it has a great flower pattern on the front.  The center bar is marked "GERMANY."  This is most likely a suspender buckle or pants waist adjuster, typical of the 1850's and 60's (matching the later timeframe of the flatbutton found with it).

I also managed to find several old coins today, including two wheat pennies (1940 and 1918), and two silver dimes (1958 Roosevelt and 1937 Mercury).  Both dimes were surprisingly shallow for a worked site, so I'm sure there's more out there to find.

The coolest find by far is this large brooch, which was once silver plated.  It was recovered in two pieces, so again I remind new detectorists to always check your holes.  The front image is of two peacocks kissing, their bodies forming a heart.  The decorative style looks to be Victorian to me, but I'm can't say for certain on the age.  Regardless, this is my favorite piece for the day, and I'm really thrilled to have found it!

Thanks for checking out the blog, and you can also keep up to date with Detecting Saxapahaw on Facebook.  Until next time, happy hunting and God Bless!

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!

Recent and Upcoming Events

Hey everyone!  I thought I'd let you know, I probably won't have a lot of time to detect in the next two weeks.  Don't worry, I won't leave you without posting - and I'll have a mega-update in mid-November.  I'm getting everything in order to attend the "Diggin' in Virginia XIX" event on the weekend of November 11th.  DIV is an invitational group relic hunt held in or around Culpeper, Virginia.  Hundreds of relic hunters from around the country will be gathered on 500+ acres of Civil War battle sites and long-term camps.  (All sites are on private property with owners permission, of course).  The event will consist of three days of metal detecting, hut excavation, a lecture on the Civil War history of the site, and seminars covering modern improvements in metal detecting technology and techniques.  I can't wait!!  I will have lots of pictures and video to share with you all when I get back, and hopefully some more interesting relics from the War Between the States.

In other news, I attended the monthly meeting of the Triangle Relic Recovery club on Tuesday, which is always a blast.  I got to see some friends and a few new faces, as well as a host of great relics and coins on display.  I was very fortunate to have been voted the "best display" at the meeting (I have an upcoming post planned on my latest budget display project) as well as 1st place for the "best relic" of the month, the Virginia State Seal button with original thread found here at Victory Calls Stables.  I also received second place for the "best coin" category with my 1927 Standing Liberty Quarter.  First place went to Ken with an outstanding pocket spill - three barber quarters found in the same hole.  Way to go Ken! 

I hadn't been paying much attention to year-end-award points, but I did quite well at both this meeting and the last one, which brought me up to second place overall.  I'm still quite a ways behind my hunting partner Brad for first, but it's possible if I come up with a couple of really great finds this month.  I'm going to try!  But the third-place hunter (John from my Bentonville trips) is an experienced and consistent detectorist, and he won't make it easy for me to hold on to 2nd place.  A little friendly competition can be quite motivating!

While I can't get out detecting much until DIV (and during some of the colder months ahead) I'll be focusing my posts on research and previous finds.  I still have a lot of history in my collection that I'd like to share with you all as the months go by.  If there's anything in particular you'd like to hear more about, please let me know in the comments section below or email me.  Thanks for looking, 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.