LazarusLong714
Full Member
Good morning everyone. As titled, I am asking for advice or maybe more correctly, how to do the research on a chunk of land. This is my first year of MDing in the actual dry dirt. I have zero experience of looking up or researching history of land or properties. Don't even have a clue where to start.
Locally, I have found a couple of "parks" and "tot lots" that I can go to, but I would rather find other places to hit up. I know a guy that has about 20 acres of farm field that I have asked to detect, once the crops are off, and i have gotten permission to do so. I am out in "the country" so to speak, but I am not FROM the country, so I don't know all of the farmers... didn't go to school with any of them, aren't related to any of them by blood or marriage. I don't know the old stories about the land and I don't know who to ask. I WOULD like to detect some fields around me.
I have PM'd a couple of members here who also live in the state I am in and they have had what sounds like significant luck in some farm fields closer to their actual locations, but I know that is dependent on what HAPPENED in that field in the past. For them, Civil War buttons have been found because troops have camped in those fields at some point. Ohio Forces either on the way to the fighting or on the way home. I know that I could spend the rest of my life detecting on fields and find absolutely nothing if there is nothing to find, so the question is, how do I look into the history of any specific chunk of land?
Once the field is cleared and I start spending time on it (the one farm I have permission for) I would like to be able to selectively approach other farmers in the area and ask permission to hunt on THEIR fields, tool. But not indiscriminately.... hopefully fields that have some documented history.
I am familiar with the fact that the new super highways we have are generally NOT following old roads... it is the old roads I am looking for, and I have those near me. I know that fields were at one point forests and around here, many treed areas were once fields. 50 years of untended growth can make a spot look like it was never cleared of trees. I have seen that happen in my lifetime to a property a friend's family owned when I was young. Still amazes me when I drive by it and recall riding his horses in some of the space you would have a hard time walking through.
Thanks for reading and hopefully pointing me in the right direction to get started.
Lazarus
Locally, I have found a couple of "parks" and "tot lots" that I can go to, but I would rather find other places to hit up. I know a guy that has about 20 acres of farm field that I have asked to detect, once the crops are off, and i have gotten permission to do so. I am out in "the country" so to speak, but I am not FROM the country, so I don't know all of the farmers... didn't go to school with any of them, aren't related to any of them by blood or marriage. I don't know the old stories about the land and I don't know who to ask. I WOULD like to detect some fields around me.
I have PM'd a couple of members here who also live in the state I am in and they have had what sounds like significant luck in some farm fields closer to their actual locations, but I know that is dependent on what HAPPENED in that field in the past. For them, Civil War buttons have been found because troops have camped in those fields at some point. Ohio Forces either on the way to the fighting or on the way home. I know that I could spend the rest of my life detecting on fields and find absolutely nothing if there is nothing to find, so the question is, how do I look into the history of any specific chunk of land?
Once the field is cleared and I start spending time on it (the one farm I have permission for) I would like to be able to selectively approach other farmers in the area and ask permission to hunt on THEIR fields, tool. But not indiscriminately.... hopefully fields that have some documented history.
I am familiar with the fact that the new super highways we have are generally NOT following old roads... it is the old roads I am looking for, and I have those near me. I know that fields were at one point forests and around here, many treed areas were once fields. 50 years of untended growth can make a spot look like it was never cleared of trees. I have seen that happen in my lifetime to a property a friend's family owned when I was young. Still amazes me when I drive by it and recall riding his horses in some of the space you would have a hard time walking through.
Thanks for reading and hopefully pointing me in the right direction to get started.
Lazarus