Old school sights question

[Robinhood]

Not sure where this belongs, but...

My grandfather has a map of my county from 1903 and 1938. On the 1938, all of the country school locations are marked, which were about one schoolhouse per every four square miles. I know only a few of these abandoned structures are still standing and have permission to detect at those.

My question to all is this: 98% of these sites are now farmed and likely have been for 50+ years. There is nothing there anymore other than what I can see from the map, which means discs, plows combines and cattle have been over those spots year after year. Is there ANY use trying to detect in those places in the spring and fall when the crops are harvested? I know I can get permission in many of these locations so that won't be an issue.

 

[Robinhood]

n/t

 

[GKMan]

Good Lord yes! People pull very old coins out of farm fields all the time.. My best find ever the 1793 Liberty Cap Cent is from a farm field.

 

[fowlercharles]

Hi Robinhood, I have been digging for many years , and can think of few if any places I have detected that have not been disturbed in some way or other, Even places in deep woods, if there was a trail or path to them in any way will have seen the hand of modern man and machinery in some way or other. As for your school sites, you may could also say that many of them have also had "sod" grown and removed from them, which always removes the goodies. I used to hunt a big field/cow pasture,(Andy Jackson troop campsite) that was under the plow for 80 years and used also for sod, but my buddies and I still found several slick buttons from those troops. Time, patience, and effort spent will be needed anywhere you hope to find anything. Sounds like you have a great opportunity at some great sites but you certainly won't know until you do your time on them. HH Charlie

 

[Robinhood]

This is what I was hoping to hear guys! Thanks for the encouragement! Now I can't wait until the crops are out because I'm pretty sure they've never been hit.

 

[Elton]

Also if it freezes where you are. Frost heave brings things closer to the ground as it thaws in the spring..

hunt the areas hard and slow.You may be rewarded with some nice finds..

 

[roadapple]

Just Look at all the treasures and what they find over in Europe !!!! Ask yourself how many times have those fields been plowed in 600 to 800 years ? The answer is a heck of alot more than in any field here in the USA. So go and get'm !!! Then post the treasures your going to find, Happy Hunting

 

[fishnnut]

I hunted an early 1900's school location yesterday that is now just a wheat field....School and all remains are long gone but I have an old map and the farmers permission so I know where it once was..Only found a couple wheats yesterday but I am going to try it again if it ever cools off. One thing I have noticed is that older pennies do get more corroded over the many years from fertilizers that the farmers use in the crop fields. Not much a person can do about that I guess but hopefully find some silvers and they should be fine. Kids around here were pretty broke I think back in the day but I can usually find a few wheats and a silver or 2 once in awhile at those spots. Always interesting seeing whats in the ground from that long ago. Good luck on your hunt.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I've hit a lot of one room school house sites that we know were virgin (d/t odd-ball easy conductors we'd get). Nothing there now 'cept a cow pasture, or furroughed field at a country cross-road, etc... And in almost every case, they were pretty meager pickin's. Perhaps a single teens wheatie, a few suspender buttons, mix junk, etc..

The reason is: a lot of those 1 room school sites (every 4 miles or so) were very short-lived, and very small student population. Some existed for as little as a few years, and were really nothing more than someone's back-room that doubled as a "school". And "school" was often nothing more than a few neighbor's collection of kids, numbering perhaps as few as 10 or 12 . And they faded as the age of autos came. When bussing started, all the kids "went to town" and most of the country schools folded by the teens.

And when you think of it, it really wasn't till post WWII (1950s and beyond) that America became very prosperous, to the point where even little kids carried money/coins. You know, like with the school lunch and milk programs (where every kid began to be sent to school with a nickel or dime in his pocket). But during and prio to the depression, it was quite unlikely for kids to have coins. Adults maybe, but not kids.

I've seen this played out in city elementary schools, for example, that date to the 1920s: You'll notice that the vast majority of silver recovered from such school grounds (if you were to interview hunters who've hit them since the dawn of detecting in the 1960s early BFOs and TR's) has always been primarily 1940s/50s/60s losses. And when you do find teens, 20's and '30s coins there, they show evidence of actually being circulated till the '40s/50s. When I first started md'ing in the 1970s, I always wrote that off to the theory that the "older coins must be deeper". But now that depth isn't an issue (with todays' machines, or having sampled scrapes in the same schools, etc...) it has become clear to me that the demographics simply weren't the same, for coin-carrying, for kids, prior to 1940, vs after 1940.

 

[JB(MS)]

The old one room schools in this area were consolidated with larger country schools in the late 19 teens and early 20's. I hunted three of the pre 1920 one room schools and found three wheaties, two at one school, one at another and none at the third, and gave up on them. The larger country schools, one about every 5 miles, in the county I live in were closed after the end of the 1957-58 school year and the students moved to schools in towns. I and the guys I hunt with found a lot more coins than we expected to find where the larger country schools were, but most of the coins were 1940's and 50's pennies with a few 1930's mixed in. We also found an occasional buffalo nickel, Mercury or Roosevelt dime and Indian head penny, but quarters and larger coins were extremely rare finds.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Another thing for y'all to remember, is that sometimes some one-room school houses doubled as other things: grange halls, churches on Sundays, etc.... So not every 1-room school is the same. It *is* possible to find one where adults and/or other usages also occured.

 

[joe dirt_1]

I love hunting farm fields where old home sites once were. One site I hunt has produced some old coins like a large cent, 2 cent piece, indian head pennies, a confederate spur, and a 73 rd Illinois Infantry hat pin from the civil war.
I found this map online in the old county atlas showing schools and churches from 1837 to 1987. I gives the name and shows it on the map. I'm going to check some out this fall and see what shows up.....HH

Roger

 

[GKMan]

That is a great map to use for research.