Searching the Ashes of a Tragic, Century-old House Fire

[Music] [Music] hey folks well it would appear spring has finally arrived here in the mountains of Vermont all of these trees have buds ready to pop spring and femorals are starting to come through the leaves and the black flies are just starting to come out despite that it's going to be nice walking around up here without any snow on the ground we're on the search today for an old stone foundation somewhere up here from my research I learned that the patriarch of the family owned a dry-goods like a general store down in town this home burned down somewhere between 1900 and 1910 I wasn't able to discover why it burned down but you know they didn't have electricity up here so I have to assume it was a candle or a lantern or something like that supposed to be ready to over this hill and back down through the valley a bit the road is long gone but hopefully we can still find it all right well we've made it absolutely beautiful place nice and open stone work stone walls all over the place and today I am especially excited because I have a brand new metal detector I got an XP Deus these things from what I've heard are incredible so I'm really excited to see how it does here I'm gonna get it out and see what we can find all right well I just got a pretty good target and I dug it out and I thought that it was an upholstery button which is why I didn't get my camera out sooner because I don't recognize it doesn't have a shank and I flipped it over and it's hollowed out and it was full of dirt so I got my toothbrush out just to make sure and I don't know can you see this that is what I'm pretty sure is a eagle like a military-style eagle yeah I get my toothbrush out or my water out let's see if we can get that cleaned out more see what it might be all right I don't think this is military it says warranted super something at the bottom I think this is just a you know a typical button but not one I've ever seen before has a really odd inset design riveted on something I don't know I've never seen this style before but it's pretty cool not military I don't think but I certainly got me excited there for a minute let's see if we could find something else all right well this find is a common one it's a harmonica reedplate you know I've stopped showing them in videos because I find them so often but this one gives us our first glimpse at the fire you can see that this has clearly been melted the foundation stones right here I mean it's hard to get a better example of the history of this place you know as I said it's not a valuable artifact typically but because of the context of the place what we know happened here it's a interesting display piece see if we can find something else all right I just found something here really cool I'm not entirely sure what it is I have a couple guesses when I first pulled it out I thought perhaps it was a lighter wow look at that Malia nervous about breaking this lid off I'm wondering now if this is more like a match case and I'm not entirely sure when lighters really you know pocket lighters really started to gain popularity and become a common thing to find in somebody's pocket let me get my toothbrush out see if we can get it cleaned up a little bit wow that's even prettier than I thought it was I have to suspect that this belonged to the lady of the house I mean I could be wrong but certainly seems feminine you know looking at the construction here it appears to be a stamped brass you know which brings us into route probably around the turn of the century very early 1900s that made a statement you pulled it up to light something very cool all right let's move on let's see what else we can find you know I can't help but think about this match case and you know how it relates to the tragedy that happened to this home from what I understand house fires were extremely common back then before electricity houses were lit up at night with lanterns from what I've read not so much wax candles because wax was expensive but certainly oil lamps I've already found one fragment of one today open cooking fires inside the home houses burnt down unfortunately this family decided not to rebuild I'm sure it was beautiful up here at the time but you know folk started getting electricity down in town and people started moving in all right let's keep going let's see what else we can find [Music] [Music] [Music] alright we got a coin it's really pretty interested to see what the date is on it here is in a small cent leave it's an Indian Head Penny yeah I think it's a yes there it is get this cleaned up enough to read the date nope afraid not but you know the date range is not that wide probably the late 1800s would be my guess maybe we can get it cleaned up more at home but even if not it's a coin which means you know they were dropping money maybe there'll be more pretty common find here but it's always a cool one this is a suspender piece buckle whatever you want to call it you know used to hold your pants up oftentimes there's a brand on here but it appears this one is plain it's pretty sturdy still it's a very cool cool artifact old suspender buckle maybe we'll find the other one all right why you've got some pottery in the hole but that's not what my metal detector found it's chain and I think it's brass because it rang up pretty good on the metal detector I don't know if there's something on the end or what so we're just gonna look at it together here it's quite long let's see no I'm gonna venture a guess and say that this was jewelry probably not a necklace but maybe a for a pocket watch I mean really anything could be attached to these glasses really really cool which it was gold or silver but brass is good enough for me you know I think I probably say this in at least one video every spring but this has got to be my favorite time to be in the woods we've got spring ephemeral is coming up the Trillium soon we're gonna have like morels and ramps and I'll start thinking about a spring foraging video like we've done in past years it's just so nice to be out of the colder weather in the winter and you have to think you know how excited I am the people who lived here 100 200 300 years ago this time must have been extremely exciting for the farmers the work was about to really really start but we get several feet of snow up here in the mountains every winter and as hard as that is for us now back then it must have been even harder so this time of year would have been the time to celebrate for sure [Music] all right well I'm not sure what to think of this one it was a double beep on my metal detector I mean something is close to the surface and it was just like a fifty tone you know foil so I stuck my shovel and right here like this popped and I saw it was sitting on the surface like this and it's a beautiful what is a V nickel I'm wondering if you know people before me who metal detected found this and a fell out of their back it was just sitting right on top just right underneath the layer of leaves which is unusual 1908 see the the V which is actually an Roman numeral five for five cents folk to call it a vehicle I think it's actually called a Liberty Head nickel 1906 bizarre you know I feel like this was found and then dropped or recently because it was right on top of this decomposing forest floor I don't know that's an unusual one but I'm not complaining weirder things have happened well I it seemed quite shallow I'm not sure exactly what we have here it appears to be a ring with what I think is maybe a design or on the outside but I don't know I think it's brass I don't know if it's modern or what we're quite a ways from the foundation let me spend a minute we with some water on this I didn't want to push it too far with scrubbing it with just my toothbrush out here so we'll wait till we get home to clean it up a bit more but know if you can make that out it has some very pretty what is that called filigree leaves and different designs on here I believe this is a man's size maybe not barely fits it well yeah it fits my pinky but no I think this is period I Isis I thought maybe there was a chance as it was dropped like a hunter or somebody out here over the last hundred years but you know the amount of patina on here for this brass ring I'm gonna I'm gonna say that its period with the home site here the brass rings that I typically find are the brass wedding bands that are marked as gold I've never really found one quite like this just kind of a decorative brass it would have been polished up you know shiny gold color back in the back in the time when it was new but you never know maybe the gold one is here we'll find a layer today and we'll hold my breath alright I just found something that I've never found before and I'm not it's falling apart I'm not entirely sure the proper name for this but you can see here there's a spring but if you look down at this end you have all of these little fingers here this I believe you could call a mechanical pencil but I think probably the proper name for is a lead holder because I don't think that the lead came out you know like our modern mechanical pencils do I think that you would press on this it would release these teeth and then you could manually pull out the lead release but I'm fairly certain that that's a you know mechanical pencil or a lead holder it's a you know it was a writing device that used lead really really cool I wish it wasn't so broken but being in the ground for over a hundred years certainly isn't the best way to preserve items right all right days winding down we're gonna call this our last fine for today let's get everything gathered up see what we found all right we're gonna call it a day we found a lot of really interesting things today things that can be related directly back to the owner and you know the tragedy that happened to the home here and it doesn't really get much better than that we've got it all laid out here let's take all right look at all the stuff we found today I say it over and over again metal detecting colonial sites and the mountains of Vermont is an incredible opportunity but these kind of turn-of-the-century late 1800s sites the variety that we find is hard to be a lot of really cool things today we have right upfront the what I believe is a match case our Eagle button which you know it's I don't think it's military because it does say warranted super superb something or other but it still has that you know saw that Eagle I get super excited a couple coins we have a V nickel and an Indian Head Penny the brass ring with a really pretty you know leaf design on their suspenders just an enormous musket ball I didn't show that rang up super good on the metal detector to fragments of harmonica reed plate but one of them as we noticed was burnt in the fire a chain likely for a pocket watch I would suspect let holder just a few buttons here one two three four buttons this I believe is a like a corset clasp clock part one two three four spoons and two lantern parts incredible day lots of really cool stuff alright folks I am so glad that the warmer weather is finally here and we can get back out on a regular basis again and from what I can tell that new metal detector worked flawlessly I'm excited to see what I can find for us this year thanks again for watching you

Channel: Green Mountain Metal Detecting

Views: 49,717

Keywords: adventure, Vermont, best metal detecting finds, metal detecting finds, metal detector, metal detecting coins, metal detecting videos, treasure hunting, metal detecting shovel, metal detecting tips, metal detecting, treasure, old coins, cellar hole, history, incredible, amazing, gmmd, stone walls, mystery, ghost town, 2019, New England

Id: ay4wZPPpMVc

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020