Hunting Bottles in an Old Barn

On Thursday July 17th The Glove mustered skilled workers to help him repair a weather beaten structure that stands alone on some property he recently purchased, just west of Warkworth Ontario. Dumpdiggers answered the call - but only so we could rummage about in the forgotten history of the old barn.

This old barn sits alone on the south side of Hwy 29 which bisects a historic local region known as Oak Heights. This structure has survived the farm house and all other buildings on the property and now towers over their cement foundations – it has even outlived the United Church which was the focus a tiny farm community, one century earlier.

The barn was built almost 100 years ago, and was probably erected right on top of a smaller, earlier structure on the same spot. For the last forty years, this farm was owned by Eddie Dudeck who died just a few years ago. He was an eastern European immigrant (Polish?) , a tobacco farmer, and something of a land baron. Many of the local residents worked for him at one time or another, including my own father.

This barn did not exist in the 1870s, when the settlement was first surveyed for the Northumberland Co. 1878 map available in McGill University's Blackadder Digital Collections. Here's a cut away that I fashioned which shows the property belonged to Johnson Brewster. His 200 acre lot also supported the church. On a side note, my own ancestor's original plots are also recorded here. My great, great, great grandfather George Campbell died when a rock he was burying on his land tumbled in on top of him. The family legend is that he's still there somewhere on that farm, underneath that rock.

All around the stone walls outside the building is the best place to find coins, old pocket watches and spent ammunition. The first thing I noticed when I approached the site was how much debris and loose material had collected over time against the stone foundation. It was easy to shovel through this fluffy matter - yes thats cow dung in the right hand side of the picture. Littered with crumbling barn boards, buckets, and straw bales, the surface debris rests on top of some harder sub soil that conceals older relics. I have no doubt that some concentrated digging and sifting on this site would yield all manner of old coins and broken tools.

In some situations Dumpdiggers employ passionate enthusiasts to retrieve surface objects. These people are specially trained professional who don't mind doing a little dirty work when it comes to recovering our valuable heritage. Here's young Alec with a quart of port. When we opened the bottle it still looked remarkably palatable - it smelled pungently like overripe wine vinegar. A distiller could no doubt refine this fluid into the finest moonshine.

The wooden floor boards above the drive shed are carpeted in rotting tobacco, which I tried to photograph, without success. The decomposing plant matter now perfumes the air in a musty fragrance. Underneath the ancient straw in an adjoining hay mow I found fertilizer bags and newspapers, one of which was dated September 1976 - Dumpdiggers believes this pinpoints the last summer the barn was used in any serious agricultural enterprise.

The dividing wall between the hay mows. If I had more time on site I would dig away the straw and loose leaf tobacco from around the short wall that bisects the interior of the barn. This is where Dumpdiggers would have the best chance of finding lost coins, jewelery and spent beverage bottles.

Here are some old beer bottles that have already been recovered on this site. The labels on the bottles read, O'Keefe's Extra Old Stock Ale, Molson's Stock Ale from Montreal, Bradings Old Stock Ale, and IPA. The Glove believes this wide selection of 1970's era paper label beer bottles evidences teenagers dipping into their father's coolers and meeting here in ritual drinking. But I don't agree. I suspect these old bottles are the scattered remains of a late 70's era tobacco season harvest party wherein it was customary to provide young workers with a massive selection of commercial brew craft upon which they might deliberate their first taste of alcohol.

Buying and selling historic lumber sounds like a good business. Here's a Canadian website that buys old barn boards. Pine was the building material of choice for old barns in the 1800's. This abundant local wood survives the elements untreated – pine doesn’t shrink when it dries. All this is because pine has a natural resin (which is distilled to make turpentine?) that coats and protects its fibrous cells. Cedar also has a natural oil, but this wood doesn’t last as long outside and doesn’t grow to the size of pine logs.

The north wall of the stable bears the marks of an unsympathetic addition; the window boxes on the east side are an entirely different shape. This means the barn was expanded at some point and the oldest diggings would be found around the north wall.

Explore the tops of all stone walls. When I ran my hand above the window boxes I encountered all manner of rusted objects – old door knobs and electrical boxes and even a spring loaded wooden mouse trap that fortunately wasn’t cocked. There were spent shotgun shells and a few small tins, oxidized beyond all recognition. Dumpdiggers also found lots of square nails and a broken lock.

This is just one historic property in transition - the rolling hills of Northumberland County seen here in the distance will soon be enhanced by gardens, fruit trees and a cute little animal pasture in the foreground. That's probably how it looked on July 17th 1908 when this barn was the center of activity on the Brewster farm.

How To Find Old Dumps #2

Much like a Kung Fu sensei reminds an acolyte, ‘only by evolving beyond your greed will you ever become rich’, I used to feel the same truism applied to treasure hunters.

The Dumpdiggers Handbook instructs each reader that 'only by fostering a genuine passion for local history can you ever hope to uncover lost historical relics'. That’s a nice idea and I imagine that such a sincere passion for learning would be manifest in numerous and protracted visits to the archives, extensive copying and scrutinizing of old maps, and a great many trips spent probing forgotten heritage sites, etc. And only by eagerly learning and adopting new technologies and highly professional practices would anyone ever be able to find anything of any value… Do you believe that?

It’s not true. When I asked some veteran Diggers on a particular niche discussion forum their secrets to find old dumps, myersdigger replied that it’s as easy as walking along small creeks just outside of town searching for rusty bits of metal in the shoreline. In the same thread, tigue710, a super member added that, ‘every 1/2 mile of town will have a different dumping area... a town with a population of 10,000 at the turn of the century will usually have at least 5 dumps, all the same period, and 5 is on the low end... one other thing, dont waste your time on the poor side town unless your getting older then 1890... go for the rich guy dumps’

Just as obvious as rusty junk sticking up out of the grass on the surface of the land, metal detectors with big search coils will sometimes get deep iron hits in gulches and bogs below the surface of the earth. Iron is a good historic dump indicator, and iron tools are of course present in both colonial age, and industrial age dumps.

Depending on their collecting habits, some metal detectorists might also carry a five foot long ¾ inch steel rod that’s known as a privy rod. This simple probe is usually just a spring steel rod wielded to a short piece of grid pipe (which serves as a handle). The tip of the probe has a ball bearing with a girth slightly wider than the shaft. When users push this five foot long metal finger down into the earth they can feel the objects below – an experienced digger can recognize the feel of rusty metal cans or glass bottles or stones. Veterans will first puncture the earth with the probe, and then dig test pits to inspect the soil for ash and broken bits of pottery and glass.

Here is an 1878 Map of Warkworth Ontario, which happens to be my home town. When I look at the area and contemplate the locations of any would-be historic dumps, my eyes and experience lead me to the marshlands south of the letters R and T in the word Warkworth, on the bend in the river. That particular spot would fit all of the criteria for the first town dump.

Warkworth was founded in the 1850’s and settled primarily by Scottish immigrants throughout the 1860s. These people didn't make much garbage and most adults in this time period would have dumped medicine bottles and whiskey flasks in private - probably down their latrine holes.

I sometimes let my eyes wander about the farms all around the side of this old map. This is where I get real passionate about history. Right here it’s personal; these are my neighbor's fields, and the fence rows of my childhood. This is where I fomented what has become the foundation of my knowledge on the subject of farm dumps, and that will be my next topic in this series.