I recently came across two house locations on an 1864 map of my area that are actually on family property (why my grandfather never thought to mention them to me, I have no idea, because he definitely knew they were there and has had me over to his place before looking for stuff at another old home site). From what I've gathered, I believe they were abandoned and/or torn down prior to 1900. One of them has its now-unrecognizable footprint filled with water and not too many foundation stones around. The cellar hole for the other (which is about 6 feet deep and probably ~800sqft in area) is plainly visible but is very grown in. I nosed around with my Etrac at the second site and found an 1867 IHP pretty quickly along with some livestock tags, pieces of what looks like it used to be a crock (lying on the surface....going to collect what I can and see how much of it I can piece together), and some other miscellaneous stuff. I definitely found the trash dump for that second house too...bottles everywhere. The houses are about 200-300 feet apart with an old well that is filled in roughly halfway between. Not sure if they shared it or what, but I can only find evidence of the one and my grandfather said they only filled one in when the houses were torn down (he actually used the foundation stones to build his childhood home which is right down the road).
My question is what kind of strategy to take here. This place is located behind my parents' house 3 hours from where I live, and so I only get to detect it for maybe 1-2 hours at a shot if we go up there for a weekend, but I might make a day trip of it sometime this summer to get some extended time there.
It seems to me I'd have better luck AROUND the perimeter of the foundation than actually IN the cellar hole. On the other hand, I'm sure this place didn't have any concrete or anything on the floor, so maybe it would hold something down in the hole itself. What about the well and/or the dump area? I'll be honest, I have no interest in the bottles...some people go nuts for stuff like that, but I don't see the draw to it, sorry.
My question is what kind of strategy to take here. This place is located behind my parents' house 3 hours from where I live, and so I only get to detect it for maybe 1-2 hours at a shot if we go up there for a weekend, but I might make a day trip of it sometime this summer to get some extended time there.
It seems to me I'd have better luck AROUND the perimeter of the foundation than actually IN the cellar hole. On the other hand, I'm sure this place didn't have any concrete or anything on the floor, so maybe it would hold something down in the hole itself. What about the well and/or the dump area? I'll be honest, I have no interest in the bottles...some people go nuts for stuff like that, but I don't see the draw to it, sorry.