Sunday March 26th 2006 Privy Dig

 Well we decided that we were going to take a trip north this weekend to dig. We planed on hitting Chester Pa but on the way stopped off in Wilmington Delaware for a look at a couple construction sites in the old section of downtown. The first site we looked at we didn't see anything that was dig able. So we drove a block down the street to check the other. We were surprised to see that they had knocked down a very early pitch roof with dormer window house that was probably built in the 1800-1820 era. While I was looking at the wall of the building next door that was still standing you could see 4 distinct roof lines from even earlier houses on the property. This site was about a block and a half from the original Wilmington town square which dates back to the late 1600s. I was amazed that one of the rooflines was from a very small very early 1 1/2 story frame house that was probably built in the 1680s. Needless to say this site was early. Well we found a privy in about 20 minutes. It was a round brickliner with granet stone capping this was a common thing to do in both Wilmington and Philadelphia. there was no way we were moving these stones so we dug down next to the privy and opened a hole in the wall big enough to dig through. We were surprised that there was almost a 3 foot void under the cap stones from the privy settling.  We had hopes of a loaded pontil trash layer so we started going down it was hard digging there were more bricks then dirt. finally the bricks gave way to a layer of easily dig gable plaster and sand then. before we knew it Bottom. This hole had been completely dipped. only a few pieces of window pain on the very bottom. Needless to say this sucked.