bottles and other items... in an unusual place

Milhaus said:

I love this but I wouldn't even know where to start in asking permission to dig up an outhouse.

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IMShooter said:

to privy dig, you look at old maps, such as Sanborne. Find out where the privy was in relation to the house and go door knocking.

Bring a tarp, a bunch of boxes/milk crates and if you have any, 55gallon drums... cut sod carefully, lay in order on tarp. Probe to check depth. Commence to digging.

Put bottles in boxes/milk crates, dirt goes into 55g drums or on the tarp. if you hit a dead spot, probe again and keep digging.

Most privy will have wood shoring or brick/rock shoring for the "hole". When done, refill and tamp down fully, replace sod correctly, use garden hose or bottles of water to hit the seams, make sure owners are happy with your landscape job, shake hands and go home happy.

I started digging the farm that father-in-law grew up in. It's been in his family since the mid 1800's. outside of some obvious dumps.... old wells filled with bottles, trash pits all over, a 300yd ravine 15yd wide of nothing but bottles and such 2-3' deep....there were 4 privy sites. One that's there now from the 30's-50's and the rest were the old ones. Luckily, I don't have to be neat when I do this. It's all in the woods so I can just pile it up and fill it in when I'm done.

My 11yr old is my digging partner. We ripped the 2 holer down and cleared it. The walls were shored with logs...That's a good sign. We dug one hole and used the other hole as a set of stairs so we'd have a way back up. Haven't found much of decent stuff yet. Marbles, china pieces, some toys, ton of beer bottles....was a bit disappointed til we hit the bottom of the logs. Thought we were as deep as we were going to get.....My daughter asked if we could go another hr. We dug and bam..hit another shored wall and more black ashy sand...had to stop, but at least we know there's stuff down there...

here are a few pics of the ravine we started on: front, middle, end and a closeup of the small area we are only started at.

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Azmodeus said:

Have you guys ever dug one's like this? I wonder if I should get some concrete anchors into it with some rope and pull the slab up with the truck?

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IMShooter said:

Normally it's not too hard to find a privy site. Look at sanborne maps, or the owners might know. Get your probe out and insert into the ground, you hear a ping or hit something that feels like a bottle, you're good to go...

the one we're digging now was a 2-holer! that's hardcore advanced for the '30's.. and besides the shoring we're hitting the typical stuff...soil, sand, ash and repeat.

Was kind of funny...mother in law asked why we were digging the "new" outhouse. I told her it's the only one I know of. She then told me about the one at the corner of the woodshed (all hand cut timber walls). I checked it out and sure enough, you could see an area at the corner of it where the wood was a bit newer looking vs the rest that had dried with age... That's the one from late 1800's to whenver the "new" one was dug.

Then she asks if i hit up the house that was there while the one that's there now is. I just look dumbstruck. she points to the other side of the driveway (large, dirt circle driveway) at the small line of trees...she tells me that it was there on blocks over the small creek...sure enough, we started finding stuff there too...

.then they tell me the barn used to be in the grass area inside of the circle drive....and then there's the original farm.

Daughter and I were exploring and we came across a shallow long trench that looked like a streambed and it was next to quite a few rows that look to be worked at one time or another. She says, "oh yah, I think that's the original farm. And the wooden buildings on top of the hill are the cellar and a small shed".

They know I MD, they know I dig. They never thought to tell me about these places.......of course they tell me toward end of summer so I can't go nuts with a shovel and MD. Still going to be fun hitting the old foundation and stuff.

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