Friday November 28th 2008 Privy Dig
After several more empty brickliners in Baltimore I was starting to get fed up with the town for a bit. And as it would happen I got a call from Russ telling me to be in Philly at 6:00am tomorrow that he had permission for two deep south west Philly pits. I arrived about a half hour early at the site and waited for Russ, his brother Randy, Ken, and George to arrive. It was decided that we would open up both pits but I was the only one with a tripod So it was decided that we call another digger with a tripod to come help. So I called my friend Tom he lives about an hour away He said he couldn't come up until around 9:00am. We said that fine and would get both pits opened and dug down as far as possible by time he gets there to just set up his tripod and get to work pulling buckets. Myself, Randy, and George started a pit it was ash for the first few feet then a collapsed arch and some pipes running through it. after 6 feet it went to solid clay. We set up my tripod and started pulling buckets. And more buckets of clay. Finally Tom had arrived and set up his tripod. Him, Russ, and Ken's pit was ash mixed with lots of brick for the first 10 feet then it had about 5 foot of clay which gave way to a rich layer of loam laden with 1890s bottles and shards. This layer steadily dropped back to the early 1870s for the next 12 feet. They recovered over 100 bottles. The pit I was working on continued with heavy clay. Until it bottomed out at 27 feet deep with no trash layer this pit was completely cleaned out. But we had agreed to pool all the finds from both pits for the split. So everyone would go home with bottles.
