Mystery item/tool?

[Lou L]

Another hobby of mine is metal detecting and the cool early American items I find in the ground are one of my major inspriations for blacksmithing.  I found one item in what I believe was a trash heap along the outside wall,of a mill that started along the CT River well before 1700.  There was a 250 year old oak growing in the center of the foundation.  Along with loads of bent nails, clam shells and broken plates I found this item.  I need to go back and dig deeper because there is more on this site but time is not with me.  Anyway, can anyone recognize this or guess it's purpose?

It was clearly broken in one place in the thickest section that is handle-like.

The other end has a saddle shaped opening the purpose of which I cannot surmise.  I've been trying to unravel the mystery of what this once was for a while now.  Perhaps someone here (a curmudgeon knowledgeable in early Colonial ironwork perhaps) can point me I the right direction.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.  The only clue I can offer is that I found a number of ox shoes and lead horn tips nearby so they definitely had oxen as working animals for the mill.  The area was also known for the granite quarry just up the hill that shipped stone as far as London.

Thanks in advance for any ideas,

Lou

[Jackdawg]

Looks like part of a harness set for a horse pulling a plough.

[Lou L]

I was thinking the same thing but was put off by two things:. It is very small comparatively and they always seem to be made out of wood.  Right after reading your post I went ahead and searched images and found ONE example of something similar but it had more rings and was more ornate.  I'd be pleased to find out it is part of a super primitive plowing harness!  

 

Thanks for for the insights,

Lou

[Charles R. Stevens]

Acualy your close, it's part of a set of light hammes for a buggy harness.

training and shoeing driving horses is my day job ;-)

[Lou L]

Thanks Charles, are there any collectors of decayed, broken 17th century (or early 18th century) buggy harnesses?

 

in all seriousness, I would love to recreate this thing but my skills aren't there yet.  I can't even figure the order of production or how to weld that ring in place.

[ThomasPowers]

using real wrought iron I can see either placing the ring on the anvil horn and placing the bar on top of it and welding. (done very fast and at spitting heat of course.  Or you could even overlap it on the face of the anvil and weld and flatten down to the bar size and then redrift the ring to true it up.  Any weld lines to show how they did it?

[Lou L]

It is very corroded.  I found it underground more than a foot down in a very old trash pile.  I haven't tried to scrape through to see more detail on it for fear that I would destroy it.  But, now that I know exactly what it is I can try without fearing making identification impossible.

[ThomasPowers]

I picked up a crossbow quarrel tip when I was in Germany from a fellow doing metal detecting.  He was surprised when I didn't want to buy the most perfect example; but I bought one where the corrosion showed *exactly* how it was forged as you could see the weld and the wrought iron showed how it was hammered into shape.

[Smoggy]

Here in the UK, it is illegal to dig up a miden in search of artifacts, even as young as a century old. Your item, if correctly excavated, would likely be dateable by it's location and any other items found with it. You could well be destroying American History by runaging through a known tip. It's one thing finding a piece of broken tack in a field that's been covered by the plough, but digging through the miden if it is as old as you are suggesting in your previous posts destroys any dating evidence above the item you've found.....you may want to rethink how you go metal detecting.

[Kozzy]

5 hours ago, Smoggy said:

Here in the UK, it is illegal to dig up a miden in search of artifacts, even as young as a century old. Your item, if correctly excavated, would likely be dateable by it's location and any other items found with it. You could well be destroying American History by runaging through a known tip. It's one thing finding a piece of broken tack in a field that's been covered by the plough, but digging through the miden if it is as old as you are suggesting in your previous posts destroys any dating evidence above the item you've found.....you may want to rethink how you go metal detecting.

That's rather curious.  I understand the sentiment involved but there is so much of no historical value which is just rusting away that it seems more a negative than a positive.  Of course, on our side of the world, the really old sites are pretty rare.  It really does tend to be interesting junk and not of historical significance.

My teenage daughter was visiting my little spread and was a little bored so I handed her the metal detector and shovel and pointed her toward an area of the back pasture where I knew junk had been dumped over the years.  An hour later she came back saying "Dad...I found something big...I need some help".  After helping her move a little more dirt, it became apparent that she had found a large buried safe.  She really thought she had found Captain Kidd's treasure at that point.  We finally moved enough dirt and got the tractor to lift the thing out of the by-now huge hole--as she drooled with the anticipation of youth.  Everything seemed still intact and untouched.  Unfortunately, someone had broken through the *bottom* to get inside and no treasure was to be found.

It now sits in my front yard as a piece of yard art to remind her of the adventure.  I took some old boots and pants and a couple of round wood fence posts to make legs that stick out and up from under to make it look like the safe fell from the sky and squashed someone.  The grandkids get a kick out of it.

[Alan Evans]

22 minutes ago, Kozzy said:

That's rather curious.  I understand the sentiment involved but there is so much of no historical value which is just rusting away that it seems more a negative than a positive.  Of course, on our side of the world, the really old sites are pretty rare.  It really does tend to be interesting junk and not of historical significance.

My teenage daughter was visiting my little spread and was a little bored so I handed her the metal detector and shovel and pointed her toward an area of the back pasture where I knew junk had been dumped over the years.  An hour later she came back saying "Dad...I found something big...I need some help".  After helping her move a little more dirt, it became apparent that she had found a large buried safe.  She really thought she had found Captain Kidd's treasure at that point.  We finally moved enough dirt and got the tractor to lift the thing out of the by-now huge hole--as she drooled with the anticipation of youth.  Everything seemed still intact and untouched.  Unfortunately, someone had broken through the *bottom* to get inside and no treasure was to be found.

It now sits in my front yard as a piece of yard art to remind her of the adventure.  I took some old boots and pants and a couple of round wood fence posts to make legs that stick out and up from under to make it look like the safe fell from the sky and squashed someone.  The grandkids get a kick out of it.

What an intriguing find. Did you manage to track down any history of it? Former use of your little spread? Bank robber gang hideout and dumping ground? Locksmith lived here and brought work home?

Alan

[Kozzy]

 

14 minutes ago, Alan Evans said:

What an intriguing find. Did you manage to track down any history of it? Former use of your little spread? Bank robber gang hideout and dumping ground? Locksmith lived here and brought work home?

Alan

The best I could do is have a local friend who was still in contact with the now 90+ year old original family member from my place contact him in TX and ask.  He had no memory of a safe so it still remains a complete mystery.  The maker's label put it about the 1900 era (give or take) and the house wasn't built until the 20's.  A couple of miles down the road there was a stage stop where people coming from the Idaho gold fields stayed (and sometimes disappeared) but the safe seems a bit new for that era.  So...it's just some junk that got dumped in the pasture and buried at some mystery time in the past.

[Lou L]

On August 16, 2016 at 0:35 PM, Smoggy said:

Here in the UK, it is illegal to dig up a miden in search of artifacts, even as young as a century old. Your item, if correctly excavated, would likely be dateable by it's location and any other items found with it. You could well be destroying American History by runaging through a known tip. It's one thing finding a piece of broken tack in a field that's been covered by the plough, but digging through the miden if it is as old as you are suggesting in your previous posts destroys any dating evidence above the item you've found.....you may want to rethink how you go metal detecting.

The site I was detecting is not a historical site and is not protected.  The history of the site has long ago been preserved and, currently, it is an area set aside for hiking.  A railway was built right through the center of the location in the late 19th century and, in recent times, much of the surrounding location was paved over by a large corporation.  The site I detected on had long ago been studied and left for public consumption.  Only the graveyard remains untouched and protected and I certainly wouldn't go there.  The laws for detecting around historical areas are well established here and I was not breaking them.  In fact, it is quite challenging to do the research and find sites that have been left to time and are not protected.  I have spent two years trying to track the movement of Rochambeau's French army through my state but every site where they camped is either protected or has been covered by concrete.  If I manage to find artifacts from their passing in a strange location you can be certain that I will document what I find and where and inform the historical society.

[Charles R. Stevens]

In context

[Lou L]

Thank you for the context!  Not long ago that object bewildered me and now it just makes sense.  Considering all the evidence of oxen in the woods (once farm fields) I am a bit surprised to find horse and buggy tack.  That area was really interesting..

[Frosty]

There were a lot of horse and buggy folk say the doctor. Ox are too slow and you can't transport an injured person on horse back. right now I'm blanking on any of the other professions where speed and some cargo or passenger capacity was important. Sheriff maybe?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Lou L]

The site was an old mill.  The are was settled around 1652 and you can bet the mill was one of the first things they built.  In New England at that time mills were the tools of expansion into new areas.  The area became known for its white granite that was shipped to England and later became known for its ship building.  You can find the decayed foundations for the port at the river's edge and follow the remnants of the cobbled road leading away from it right into the forest where it disappears.  I spent hours trying to follow that road into the woods but couldn't pin down its location past 100 feet.  It's amazing how Mother Nature does away with our machinations so effectively.  It's a haunting place.  You can hike through and find all the signs of what was once a town; but the river that once powered the mill is now just a long furrow that winds toward the CT River and the stone foundations are mostly buried.  Then you look at an old map and you can find the names of the families who owned the homes that once stood there.  The Mill was owned by the Sewell family

[Kozzy]

When the sites are a little younger, you can often sort things out by looking at the trees.  In the West, you might see nothing but a couple of apple trees in a place which doesn't really make sense for apple trees to be on their own.  No immediately visible sign of a homestead left at all but a little searching around the area starts turning up sign.  Similar with some non-native flowers in the spring or "escaped" garden plants. We see these often on Forest service land, where long ago there where "squatters" were allowed to live out their span but not transfer the property to someone else.  On the later dated sites, the FS tended to come in and do tear downs.  Earlier ones just faded away.

No, I am not talking about digging or metal detecting here--There are some interesting things to be gleaned without the shovel at times.  Water sources (had to have one), a place for the livestock, how tiny the cabin was, etc.  It can be a great thought game with the kids:  Clue finding and trying to interpret those clues to tell the story of who lived there 100+ years ago.

[ThomasPowers]

Depends where in the west you are.  Around here trees won't grow without watering; so the stumps with a low mound as adobe goes back to being dirt fast once the roof fails.

I found an old train car out in the desert near where train tracks used to go 100 years ago. It originally was almost all wood, when I found it, it was a pile of rot, rattlesnakes and wrought, (on a friends ranch).

[SmoothBore]

Just a side note, about prowling around old home sites.

In many cases, those old houses had hand-dug wells, cisterns, and root cellars, somewhere nearby.

When those houses were abandoned, ... or burned, ... the wells were often covered over with logs or other timbers, to prevent people and livestock from being injured.

Time passes, and people forget, ... but those old wells and excavations are still there, ... often covered with vegetation and debris.

The lesson being, ... fruit trees, flowers, stonework, and any other evidence of human habitation, ... should inspire a heightened sense of caution.

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

Oh yah and the *old* hand dug ones are usually quite large enough to swallow a human...(out this way it's mines as well. Had a newspaper report on find the body of a hermit floating in one; *not* *fresh* and the unpleasantness search and rescue had retrieving him... )

And we all know to let someone know *where* we will be "exploring" so if you don't show up in a day or two there is a starting point for the search party...back in College we had an arrangement that we'd leave a sealed letter in a known location so if we didn't show up for dinner in a day or two someone could go get it and start retrieval...

 

[Lou L]

Wow, I hadn't thought of that possibility.  The only wells I found in that area were of the stone-walled persuasion.  Some people use strong magnets to fish for goodies in them but I've never tried it.  I'd hate to yank out a hobo by his belt buckle!

[Daswulf]

Here in southwest Pennsylvania there are less large wells but many a mine shaft or air vent. In my early teens some friends and I were walking some train tracks along a creek. We saw what looked like a big old concrete bridge platform end between the tracks and the creek. I ran up onto it and noticed the leaf covered ground felt spongy and springy.  I was in terror to find that the only think keeping me from falling down a giant mine shaft was some rusty chainlink fence that they had covering the hole.  We ended up dropping rocks down a rusted out hole on the edge of the fence and it took quite a bit for the rocks to hit water. Scary thought that it easily could have been the end of me.