December 18th 2007 Privy Dig
We decided to dig in Wilmington Delaware today. We
arrived intown about 7:30 and took care of toping off a couple pits
that we had dug a couple months earlier these had finally settled and
both needed about a foot and a half of fill. then we met up with George
on the east side of town. and quickly found two empty houses to dig.
When george arrived he told us that Ryan was also coming to dig but was
running late. He arrived about an hour later. By time he arrived me and
Doug were already about 5 feet into the small brickliner we were
digging. George was opening up a barrel lined pit that was very wet. We
hit water in our pit at about 5 and a half feet and had to bail the pit
to the bottom. Sadly this pit had a lot of stones in the trash layer
and very few intact bottles. the bottles we were finding were from the
1880s mostly. Including some local pharmacy bottles. Finally on bottom
Doug pulled out a light yellow Vichy Wather The Spa Philadelphia T.H.D.
A very nice 1870s mineral water. Soon he announced that he was finished
the layer and I went and retrieved the ladder so he could get out of
the pit. This small brickliner was about 8 feet deep. very typical of
this side of town. George and Ryan's pit was slow going because of the
water and heavy clay. At about 4 feet the Barrel gave way to the top of
a brickliner this brickliner went about another 4 feet and a few 1880s
bottles were recovered mostly pharmacies and one nice Weiss beer from
Wilmington. We finished up the two pits rather early about 2:30 so we
decided to call it a day. And we split up the finds. We said our
goodbyes and headed off. While driving across town Doug and me spotted
a small construction site but there were still a couple guys working.
We saw that they had about a 4 foot deep pit cut right about where the
privy should be for the house they were working behind. We decided to
go get something to drink and scout around town for a bit to kill some
time until the workers left for the day. We came back about quarter
after 4 and their site was empty. We walked right in and could see a
brickliner in the pit that was cut down. I stuck the probe in it and
felt a trash layer only a couple feet down. So me and Doug opened her
up it was pretty hard digging for the first two feet because of a lot
of brick and plaster debris this quickly gave way to a nice loamy trash
layer with some 1880s bottles coming out. As we went down the layer got
older it soon gave way to a nice 3 feet of pontiled age trash. There
were some killer bottles in this layer broken including a couple
Wilmington pontiled sodas and several historical flasks and an olive
green Townsends Sarsaparilla. We did manage to find a couple pontiled
Wilmington medicines and an intact redware pie plate and an intact
Sandwich glass whale oil lamp from the 1830s in a nice amethyst color
We also recovered about 4 buckets of early ceramic shards to be
reconstructed. Overall this pit wasn't killer but was pretty good. Here
some pics of my share of the finds from the day.
Privy 1
Privy 1
Privy 1
Privy 2
Privy 2
No pictures of privy 3 but heres my share of the
finds from the 3 pits.
