Hunting History in Dartford Ontario

My father sometimes talks about his father, and the work they used to do on the farm, near Dartford Ontario. Mt grandpa started farming here sometime in the late 1930s. Our family tried everything once, and over time my grandfather erected many buildings with the help of a local builder, Bert Dalmage.

Up the road in the village of Dartford there was a grist mill and a post office, butcher and grocery store.

Dumpdiggers doesn't know much about this place, but we do have an 1878 map.

INSERT MAP HERE

On Sunday October 12th, 2008 I walked around Dartford Ontario and took pictures of old buildings and tried to imagine the workings of the village one hundred years ago. Its easy to see where certain roads and wagon trails there once popular have been forgotten and overgrown with the passage of time.

As the wheel of fortune spins, I happened across and old friend named Audrey and her daughter Tanya who were making room for something in their back shed.

I invited myself inside and in the spirit of Marshal Gummer, The Appraiser, I found myself surrounded by in veritable cornucopia of old and new age collectibles. This building was the repository of seven decades of stuff, and the very oldest material was deposited here by Bert Dalmage himself, for this building was his workshop fifty years ago.

While exploring an old barn looking for stuff to sell on eBay, and otherwise valuable antique merchandise with a friend and local supporter of Dumpdiggers.com, I happened across some wonderful collectibles on which to experiment.

Stay tuned for more posts on each piece - linked to sales on eBay and tables in the Dumpdiggers.com Underground Show and Sale.

Bottle Dumps on Country Roads

The autumn landscape is bright yellow, orange and red in Northumberland County, Ontario, Canada. The fall colours excite me and my fellow history hunters; the end of summer ignites a burning desire to explore crimson forests in search of old stories.

On October 12^th, 2008 Dumpdiggers had another outdoor adventure. Armed with a small spade shovel and a garden fork, I wandered the country roads around Dartford Ontario in search of old bottle dumps. I’ll be sure to post more information on this historic village later in this series, including an 1878 survey map.

How To Find Bottle Dumps on Country Roads. The township roads are usually the lot and concession lines on the first local maps. These are the second oldest roads in most areas; the oldest roads in North America are the Indian trails. When veteran dumpdiggers hunt for bottles and relics in roadways and farm lanes they are of course scanning the ditch, looking for any signs of century old trash buried below the surface.

Look for surface tins and rusty cans Even though these objects are worthless, they can sometimes mark the spots where older material is buried. Even if the surface tins themselves are not very old, the places they gather along fencerows and in gulleys are natural collection spots and should be excavated in shallow test pits - look for rust coloured earth and bits of glass and pottery.

The Dumpdiggers Handbook holds that there are six different types of old dumps; we are hunting deserted ditch dumps and these are places near roads where farmers and townspeople emptied wagons filled with rubbish. The best country roads are near busy towns, but still lonely strips of gravel that bisect overgrown swamps and scrub brush pasture, and the best bottle dump roads are still deserted today.

Study gates in fences. The gates in farm fields are the best place to look for bottles and coins and that’s because the gate is where all the action happens. Beyond the everyday spillage that might occur in the simple act of opening and closing the portal, there’s also the jumping and climbing of gates and this activity temporarily inverts pockets. Let’s also remember the workers who once gathered in the breach to wait for instructions or equipment, and to celebrate a job well done with some cold drinks. The bottles are seldom taken away and usually deposited in fencerow on both sides of the aperture with the intention of an eventual recovery, someday.

Look around the stumps and trunks of the oldest trees. The fence near the largest tree trunk is always a good place to swing a metal detector, or fork the tree leaves out of the grass, and move small rocks in order to look for signs of inhabitation. The shade of a thick tree is precious on a hot summer day, and it's right here that relaxing labourers would often idle about for lunch or a relaxing break. Depending on their customs, its right here that would have enjoyed a refreshing soda, or a cold beer, or even a dram of rum, or a swallow of whisky. Here's an amber whisky flask that I unearthed in a deep test pit beside a decaying tree stump. I spent an hour digging there before I found that, and I'll be sure and visit this site again in the spring to look for more specimans when the foilage is more manageable.

Inspect over-turned tree roots. When walking at the side of the road, keep a careful eye out for overturned trees and inspect the dirt on their roots. Are there any pottery shards hanging from the tentacles? Bottle caps? Is there bottle glass or glass of any kind? This is a sure sign of a dump.

Tree roots are like fingers and they often inch down into the morass and clutch buried objects which they wrench out of the mud when the wind blows the tree over. Cedar trees are particularly susceptible to strong winds . They have shallow roots that find the trash below the mud and grass of the forest ditch. This Wampole bottle exists like an ominous marker on the upturned horns of these roots - here there be old bottles and trash.

Go off road. Good century old trash can be found as far as the arm can throw, and the forest paths that meet farm lanes are likely places for wagon dumps.

On the October 12th county roads expedition I uncovered a jade teacup from the 1930's, a small amber whiskey flask from the early 1900s, and a square druggist bottle embossed CANADIAN KODAK.

SC digger is Saving History on YouTube

Dumpdiggers has a friend in Greg Toney, and we recognize him as the web’s most videogenic relic hunter, SC digger. The charismatic college professor has become YouTube's foremost authority on Civil War metal detecting - his video series Saving History has now collected over 198,000 views, and has 386 subscribers.

Although there are hundreds of treasure hunting videos online, Saving History is the best. It has the most knowledgeable host who consistently shares the highest quality information and recovers the best stuff. And most importantly, this video series has a terrific soundtrack. The opening jingle is strangely reminiscent of the HBO series Deadwood, and I personally find it delivers the same anticipatory response…

Episode One – The Collection SC digger does a great job introducing himself, and the series objective. This opening clip features a spectacular photo montage set to an acoustic version of Guns and Roses Sweet Child of Mine. In this sequence Greg lenses all the different types of buttons he has found over the years, and the result is truly breathtaking. Each little piece of metal in his collection has a long and complicated story that we can only contemplate…

Episode 21 Port Royal Camp
SC digger takes viewers to the low country of South Carolina with Bill Duggan. At the beginning of this clip there's a taste of Metallica playing in the background as Greg shoots an establishing shot from inside the cab of the truck. That episode introduces the gorgeous ruins of a three hundred year old church as Greg sketches its history, and again the music in the soundtrack is perfectly suited to the visuals.

Always improving, SC digger fingers Episode 23 Sherman's Shells as his best video yet, and I suppose that's because of the quality of the hunt. The team recovers some truly amazing ordinance from the temporary trench pits of a long forgotten civil war battlefield.

So is Greg Toney a heavy metal head banger? What an interesting juxtaposition. Could this respected filmmaker and expert historian (Greg has a Master's Degree in Mass Communication from Auburn University, a Bachelor's Degree in Mass Communication with a Minor in History from Winthrop University) also be an avid fan of heavy metal music? Not really. His profile lists his musical preferences as: R.E.M., The Cure, The Smiths, Social Distortion, AC/DC, The Doors… whatever. The entire Saving History sound mix is brilliant - that includes the musical soundtrack, and also the digging and metal detector sounds and professional sounding dialogue mixes... really outstanding audio!

The Saving History video series advocates the responsible recovery and preservation of historical artifacts. In each episode, SC digger takes viewers out into the field for adventures that educate and inspire audiences by relating all manner of hobby related tips and tricks (so amateur enthusiasts might improve their own relic hunting techniques). The show is made to satisfy armchair historians too, as SC digger usually outlines the broad strokes of major US Civil War battles before and sometimes during every hunt.

Saving History also recovers Native American artifacts like flint blades and arrowheads, and SC digger has been known to find and unearth objects that are not made of metal, like hundred year old glass bottles, stoneware inks, whiskeys, pill jars and saloon pipes.

In summary, SC digger writes, “I shoot my hunts in the field as they take place...I don't just save up for when I find something good...if I don't make any great finds, you see that too...as any relic hunter knows, that's the way 90% of the digs go...so a little reality...but, yes, every once in a while we do dig something special.’

He's Lucky in Toronto

Fresh from Vancouver, Lucky Peterson is a 30 year old visual artist that just emigrated to Toronto's prosperous art scene hoping to do more gallery shows, get more commissions and sell more paintings. It’s true, sketching and carving wood are his foremost passions, but when Dumpdiggers visited this guy in September, we were quite surprised to find his art studio is absolutely stacked with historic pottery! It turns out that Lucky has a collector’s bug and a (perfectly natural) obsession to locate, excavate and display historic stoneware and early Canadian glass.
During daylight hours inside his cozy little workshop, Lucky carves and paints wood cuts and manufactures high priced art for rich American patrons. But at night he transforms... on hot summer evenings the bottle bug seizes the boy and sends him out with a shovel. He rides a bicycle around the oldest parts of town looking for angles and perfect opportunities to step back in time - looking for a subterranean adventure and the possibility of liberating more historic Canadian stoneware from obscurity.

In the quiet evenings Lucky is a lonely digger that explores the city's oldest dump sites and digs deep holes in Toronto’s lakeshore. Lucky digs on weekends, and whenever nobody (site security) is around to bother him, or ask questions. And he’s pretty secretive about his locations, but willing to share a spirited dig with anyone bold enough to contact him. You can find him registered as Lucky on Dumpdiggers.com

After a very busy summer here in Toronto, Lucky has unearthed some pretty special pottery to add to his growing collection. He’s found the ubiquitous Vernors and the Wilsons (with the squirrel) and many fragments of other early but common stoneware vessels. And he carefully adds these to the Quebec bottles, and the Vancouver ginger beers that line the top shelf of his emporium.

Lucky is a veteran digger with soy sauce crocks and opium pipes from old town Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. He has Hutchinson sodas from New York state, druggist bottles from Montreal and stoneware ginger beers from all over Canada. Like most diggers he started as a boy and has found something decent everywhere he has lived. He has pocket watches and porcelain doll heads, cobalt blue poisons and chinese pill bottles, ceramic tooth powder lids, tins, trade cards, and vintage metal signage.

The solution for Lucky is easy because he has such an obvious if unusual passion. So of course he should harness the global market on the internet. He needs a custom e commerce solution because some web development Toronto will help him share his expert knowledge while selling glass bottles and adventure stories on the internet.

Although a seasoned collector with some nice pieces, Lucky is a web rookie with few online contacts. He doesn't know much about eBay, or how to buy and sell bottles in auctions. And that's because he works primarily as an artist making pictures with paint brushes and carving wood into Hieronymus Bosch inspired three dimensional art pieces. He only goes on the computer to use Photoshop, and only goes online to send emails. Consequently, Lucky has very little concept of what his collection is worth, which is fascinating to me... The passionate man collects and enshrines his great 'moments of discovery' without really knowing, or actively seeking to know their true market value.

Another fact remains, Lucky doesn’t tumble his glass or repair his pottery or even clean his collection very well... Yet he admits it’s a skill he'd like to have. Dumpdiggers promises to report Lucky's progress as a collector, and relate the most basic steps he takes to improves his best pieces.

The Robert Simpson Brewery in Barrie Ontario

Tuesday 16th of September 2008 was a splendid day for Dumpdiggers. Tim Braithwaite and Rob Campbell drove north to Barrie Ontario to meet Peter Chiodo, the entrepreneur behind the success and steady growth of the Robert Simpson Brewery.

Peter Chiodo makes the best beer north of the number seven highway - Confederation Ale. The master brewer has evolved a signature malting and fermentation process; unlike the big breweries, Peter lets his microbrew temper in steel vats and mature for forty days before bottling. Dumpdiggers appreciates the quality of this refreshing beverage, but that's not what brought us to 107 Dunlop St at 11am that Weds morning. The Robert Simpson Brewery is located right in the heart of old Barrie across from the historic Queen's Hotel, and its the real thing - beer is made and sold right on the premises. These are the same streets and buildings in which Robert Simpson himself walked and politicked a century earlier...

Robert Simpson was the 1st Mayor of Barrie in 1871 and he was a master brewer. Before he entered politics, he'd been brewing beer for almost thirty years, so he was an expert in brewcraft and business and stoneware bottles. In his lifetime he would have commissioned thousands of bottles, yet only two remain.

Tim Braithwaite is Canada's premier stoneware beer collector and posses a Robert Simpson bottle - but his piece was made in Toronto. According to Timbits, his clay fired vessel was made and stamped in 1849 as per the Toronto Business Index which shows Robert Simpson as one of many brewers in the city in 1850. It's well known that Simpson moved north to Barrie in 1851 (Tollendale?) and set up a new brewery there, anticipating the railroad would bring a thirsty population to the expanding lake port city. The Robert Simpson (brewer) wiki is shamefully light - some local historian should do the world a favour and fill in the blanks there. The CW after TORONTO stands for Canada West and that is explained well on Wikipedia inside a comprehensive article on Upper Canada.

The Simcoe Steam Brewery was a terrific success and Robert Simpson became a man of great importance in the community. That enterprise bottled its product in glass, and apparently there are a great many examples of those vessels still in existence, but I couldn't find anything online (do you have a photo?).

This stoneware beer bottle precedes Simpson's later success in glass. It was made when he was still just a young man, twenty eight years old, trying to survive in a big city with lots of competition. It was made by an unknown Toronto pottery shop in the late 1840s, and I reckon that means it was fashioned somewhere along pottery road in the Don River valley, but that's pure speculation on my part. The clay container is certainly worthy of display in any Toronto or Barrie museum, especially considering Robert Simpson himself probably filled it with beer almost 160 years ago.

Peter Chiodo was absolutely thrilled to be able to see and touch and connect with the namesake of his enterprise, and he learned a lot from Timbits. These two experts learned a lot from each other.

Ace of Spades Digs a Farm Dump

Dumpdiggers profile: Jason Hayter
The Ace of Spades

Ex military, tattooed, father of two, Jason Hayter lives in Owen Sound Ontario, a few hours north of Toronto. When Jay isn't looking after his kids, or working on his house, he's digging bottles. He digs for six to eight hours a day, twice a week. Obsessed with finding old glass bottles and early Canadian pottery, Jason sometimes spends whole days at the archives learning about the history of his town and the surrounding villages for the sole purpose of finding town dumps that could yield more bottles and early pottery.

His passion helps him succeed. When Tim Braithwaite first met Ace he was not totally impressed, but Tim is pretty hard to get excited. Timbits has seen every bottle twice and labels 98% of everything on display in Ace's photo galleries as junk - that's Tim's favourite word. For two years Tim has been telling Ace that everything he finds is junk. I have no doubt that Ace finds it frustrating trying to impress Tim with his run-the-mill ordinary treasures.

But all that could change real soon... If the Ace of Spades was a mining company his stock price would be climbing; last week Ace told the world about his new farm dump, and he posted some very interesting photos on a brand new discussion forum associated with this website. His proclamation includes images of a terrific farm dump that he's digging with an equally enthusiastic chum.

In addition to this exciting turn of events, Jason informs me that he has evolved a new farm dump location strategy and is now consumed with hiking and probing old farms all over the countryside around his home - with the landowner's permission of course.

It works like this: Jason uses Google map technology in combination with old county maps that he copies from local 1870s and 1880 alases found in the municipal archives. Ace uses the old maps to mark the buildings, and then uses Google Earth to scrutinize the terrain from the air and look for forgotten lane ways, road allowances and even footpaths away from the last garage or drive shed at the very opposite end of the property from the driveway. Jay sometimes makes his own composite maps at home and prints them out for his hikes. The maps pinpoint 'areas of interest' wherein he and his friend will dig test pits looking for ash or bits of pottery that might signal more buried rubbish. They are looking for really old trash, and that's always down at least six or eight feet - but surface indicators exist to 'mark the spot'.

This wisdom is indexed behind the Fundamentals of Finding Farm Dumps as recorded here in How to Find Old Dumps #3, farm dumps. This post explains how the early farmers dumped debris on the land out of necessity, but always close to the barn and out of sight and preferably where it could do the most good to stop soil erosion.

Although still a youngster, the Ace of Spades is fast maturing into an extremely competent Dumpdigger!

Vintage Canadian Ephemera at Christina's Company

Dumpdiggers remembers when Christina’s Old Prints and Nostalgia was a medium sized booth upstairs at the Harbourfront Antique Market on Queens Quay, Toronto. The cubicle was located on the 2nd floor opposite the stairs in the middle of the complex. It was there from 1982 to 2004, and I suppose it was during those twenty years that Christina's Company built up a dedicated client base of paper art collectors from all over the world. You know I spent a few hours there myself, perusing ephemera in the 1990s. I had no idea it was my friend Mary Juric's family business. She just set me straight on this last wknd.

What's Ephemera?

The word is applied to transitory written and printed matter - stuff not intended to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day. Christina's lasted twenty years at Harbourfront...

In April of 2003, Toronto’s Harbourfront Antique market closed and Christina’s Company relocated to The Danforth Village Antique Market, 715 Danforth at Pape, where they continue to offer the finest quality highly collectible vintage print art and custom framing services.

Christina's Company specializes in Advertisement Art, Bookplate Illustrations, Lithographs, Chromolithographs, Engravings, Etchings and Paper Ephemera.

People collect the weirdest things. When you get 10,000 printed pieces of paper together in one room you can promote the strangest sub categories; imagine collecting ads that feature doctors smoking? or fairies? or early airliners? even the Titanic? These paper items have more value than other ads shown at the time, but I reckon every early advertisement has some worth. Vintage commercial art marks our changing values and illustrates our evolution. This framed advertisement from 1950 is approx 16x20 and shows a medical doctor endorsing cigarettes! $90

Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color

Christina’s Company has been serving collectors, interior designers, corporate clients, set decorators and dealers for over 25 years, supplying the highest quality in vintage paper products and custom framing. With over 40 years of custom framing experience to offer, Dumpdiggers believes Mary Juric when she insists her family's distinctive custom framing service demonstrates a superior level of craftsmanship and attention to detail.