Southern Hospitality

By Robertson Shinnick

My friend Tim Buck was visiting from New Hampshire this weekend. He arrived on Saturday afternoon, finding me somewhat disheveled after a three-day bout of bronchitis and a touch of pneumonia. Saturday alternated between foggy and rainy, and was a rather dreary and cold day. After my recent illness, I wasn’t quite ready for an outing yet, particularly on such a damp and chilly day, so mostly we drove around and I showed Tim some of the historical places in the Golden Isles.

After our driving tour was over, about an hour of daylight remained, and Tim naturally wanted to try detecting a bit, so we spent a few minutes at an old plantation site near my home. However, we were rained out before we had much of a chance to detect. As I listened to torrents of rain hitting the roof that night, I found myself hoping that Sunday would dawn warm and clear, so I could show my Northern friend some Southern sunshine. Morning brought my wish, and Sunday lived up to its name. The clouds drifted away and though it was cool when we set out, it soon warmed up nicely and we really couldn’t have asked for better weather. I also was beginning to feel a little better, physically.

We journeyed north to the Crescent region of McIntosh County, to a spot where I’ve done some rural relic hunting in the recent past. (See the January 5, 2006 Digger’s diary entry). We got out and explored, and began poking around some long-vanished old homesites I knew about. I began finding bits of old pottery and clay pipestems on the surface of the bare dirt, which indicated these sites were probably around 150 to 200 years old. The first site, despite the promising visual clues like old pottery, proved to be contaminated with dozens of small pieces of modern aluminum trash, and most of the area cleared the year before had been reclaimed by tall brush and weeds. The second site is one known to many more relic hunters. It is larger, perhaps, but picked over far more. I parked the van at the bottom of the hill below it and pointed up in the trees on the hill, to show Tim the approximate location of where the old house had once stood, now indicated only by some mounds of earth and a concentration of oyster shells and pottery fragments.

I’m not much of one for bushwhacking, like some relic hunters are. I prefer open areas that aren’t too overgrown. However, those more adventurous souls who do go crashing into the brush often do well for their troubles. While rattlesnakes, spiders, ticks, and other such nasty denizens of the brush are less active this time of year, I still hate getting entangled in vines and having to climb over obstructions. I stayed in the open road area, picking up pottery fragments and bits of old clay pipe stem that had been washed out by the recent rains. My detector sounded off only once or twice, yielding rusty square headed nails and a small piece of old lead shot.

Tim, however, had no reservations about crashing into the brush, and chose to climb the hill through the woods. He soon disappeared from view entirely.

Tim proves an eager bushwhacker, and happily crashes around in the brush.

This counts as a “hill” here in my part of the Low Country. Note the pine trees at the
top of the rise, in the center of the picture. This is where one old homesite lies.

Near the top of the hill, I started finding bits of late-18th century pottery, of a type which I believe is called mocha ware. It’s always a good sign.

Bits of pottery and pipe stems I collected from the surface in the sand road, while Tim traipsed through the woods.
Fragments include old Indian pottery, 19th century blue & white transfer-printed wares, and earlier green feather-edge
and mocha ware. Note that one clay pipe stem has the maker’s name and some ornamentation on it.
The type and variety of pottery here are a sure indicator of a potentially rewarding old homesite.

I thought to myself how the last site I had found mocha ware fragments on had produced two silver Spanish Colonial half-reales from the 1770s. I began to dream fond daydreams of Spanish silver.

However, my silver dreams were interrupted, by a voice from the woods crying that very same magical word:

“SILVER!”

Was it my imagination getting the best of me? Surely if there were silver found on this old a site, it would be dreamy stuff…

Maybe some Spanish Colonial silver, like I’d just been dreaming of… or perhaps some early Capped Bust or Draped Bust United States coins!

It wasn’t my imagination! The disembodied voice shouting “Silver!” was Tim’s! I bolted toward the edge of the woods.

“Where ARE you?” I called.

Tim digs into the undergrowth and finds a long-lost piece of history…

When Tim replied, I was able to see him in the trees, barely. Crashing clumsily into the thicket he was emerging from, I breathlessly quizzed him for details. He was remarkably cool and collected. Of course, Tim is a seasoned relic hunter from New England, and has found some amazing early coins and relics in his time. I could see he was wearing a smile, though.

“I think it’s a Spanish half-real,” he said, fumbling in his pouch.

No way! Could my daydream have taken physical form, so suddenly?

As he retrieved the object from his pouch and placed it in my hand, I could see that it had, indeed!

Tim had just dug a Spanish Colonial silver half-real piece of King Charles the Fourth. It had old dents and nicks on it which looked uncannily like toothmarks, but it was nice and white. The silver gleamed in the noonday sun. Despite the old nicks in the coin’s surface, all of its major details were clear, including the Mexico City mintmark on the reverse. The first portion of the date was damaged, but the last digit showed: a nine. Before that, another nine was mostly visible. So the last part of the date read ninety-nine. During the reign of Charles IV, that could only mean one date: 1799.

A 1799 Spanish half-real! Somehow, my talented Yankee friend had pulled it off… he’d plucked a piece of eighteenth century silver from a hard-hunted relic site in the middle of nowhere!

I had to hunker beneath some bushes to see the spot where he’d dug it. Tim mentioned that the area had been “hammered”, meaning he noticed that other diehard bushwhackers had been digging around the spot before. He explained that the coin had given a mixed “iron” and “foil” reading, both of which are very low-grade readings on a detector’s meter- not really a good signal at all. Furthermore, the coin had been buried on its edge, presenting an even weaker signal, and it had been at least six inches deep in the soil beneath the undergrowth. It had taken Tim two shovelfuls of dirt to bring it out. Additionally, a small piece of lead shot had been buried within three or four inches of the coin, further complicating the already poor signal. So even though some veteran relic hunters had hit the site many times before his visit, Tim’s patience and meticulous expertise paid off, and he bagged an overlooked prize that had been waiting there for him… for about two centuries!

A 1799 Mexico City Spanish Colonial silver half-real coin of King Charles the Fourth, freshly awakened from its two-century
sojourn in the ground. Spanish silver coins circulated freely in early America, and were legal tender in the United States until 1857.
Florida was Spanish for most of the colonial period, so this part of Georgia was the southernmost frontier at the time.

While I’ve found five pieces of Spanish silver over the years myself, and Tim’s dug many nice early coins up north, it goes without saying that we were both thrilled. Though not an especially valuable find monetarily, such a discovery is always a natural high, and the sheer magic of knowing you’re the first to hold a coin since it was lost in bygone centuries is incomparable. I sincerely wish that all of you who read this get to experience such a rush one day for yourselves, if you haven’t already. Mere words fall short in describing the experience. Those of us who seek such thrills seldom care about the monetary value of the finds, anyway. It’s all about the history and the sheer fascination of the hunt. I swear, a metal detector has got to be the next best thing to having a time machine.

I crashed around in the woods with Tim a little more after his find- who wouldn’t have? But I very quickly tired of the entangling vines and I scratched my hand on some thorns. I decided he was welcome to it. I went back out into the open. Of course I didn’t find anything else of note this particular day. My interesting finds for the day were mostly of the nonmetallic, surface-collected variety.

Upon our return to Brunswick, Tim and I did some more urban coinshooting in the parks. He followed success with success, finding a 1903 Liberty nickel eight inches deep in one of my favorite parks. He also found a strange-looking piece of silver jewelry, perhaps the fragment of a brooch, which had some fake “diamonds” in it, and he dug two neat old buttons. The first of these was an anchor button, probably civilian. It looked pretty old. The second was a small “ball” button that was probably from the early 1800s. Both of us found a number of pieces of buckshot and lots of cartridge casings and deep bullets- the typical small targets that remain in some of my picked-over hotspots. One of the casings I dug was from an old .44 or .45-caliber rimfire cartridge, and almost certainly from the late 1800s. It had a “H” mark on it and I wonder if it was from an old Henry repeating rifle. I also dug a live .38 caliber round which was pretty old- the lead slug, though still seated in the cartridge, was quite white and crumbly. While digging a deep, rusty nail from one hole, I also came up with part of an old patent medicine bottle from around 1900- it was marked “Hoyt & Co., Lowell, Mass.” Another target of mine proved to be a “hot rock”, but not the usual coal-like slag that gives a metallic reading. It truly looked like a stone, and we don’t usually have much in the way of rocks and stones in our sandy soil. Could this be a meteorite? I’m not sure. It gives a pretty good reading on a detector, and I’m sure it’s not a metallic target encased in some concretion, like the Liberty nickel I found last month… it’s definitely… a rock.

Besides Tim’s two noteworthy coin finds for the day, not many coins showed up at all. He did manage to dig a few Memorial cents and a modern Jefferson nickel, plus a 1966 Canadian cent. My total take in coins was rather pathetic- two modern Memorial cents. I also found a watch lying on the surface, but it was a cheap modern quartz watch with a picture of Spiderman on the face. Some kid had apparently dropped it recently, where it succumbed to the rain and foot traffic near one of the sidewalks in the park.

After a good day’s hunting, Tim treated me to a late lunch at Spanky’s, overlooking the marsh. I had my usual- their Shrimp Quesadillas are terrific. Tim had a big platter of jumbo fried shrimp, and I had a good laugh at his expense, when he asked what the “doughnuts” on the plate were for. Apparently they don’t serve hushpuppies with their seafood up there in New Hampshire!

We watched the pelicans and cormorants sunning on the dock, as we ate lunch beside the Marshes of Glynn.

Though my northern pal’s visit was brief, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and told him I hoped to see him next year, if he heads south again. I certainly enjoyed playing host to him and was glad he took home some goodies. His skill with a metal detector is certainly enviable. Who knows, some day I might decide to flee the steamy summer here, and traipse around on some of his relic hunting sites up there.

-RWS

Send mail to Carl@CarlWohlforth.com with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Carl Wohlforth, Numismatist Last modified: 03/10/08

Send mail to Carl@CarlWohlforth.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Carl Wohlforth, Numismatist
Last modified: 03/10/08