A few weeks ago, I wrote a story about how I obtained permission for a house that was instrumental in leading over a thousand slaves to their freedom–The Wright House. This weekend, I had the opportunity to stand beside that very pile of rubble and contemplate everything that the home had stood for. I must admit, the whole experience was a bit surreal.

I think that everyone has a different motive for digging and–as I’ve mentioned before–my motive is to recover that buried shred of history that can connect me to the past. Before I bought my metal detector, I searched for history at yard sales and in old dumps. I have always been chasing a narrative that was left for me to find. 

When I talk about a narrative, I’m talking about the story that the object has to tell. When I recover an object, whether it’s a metal flask or a silver baby spoon–I wonder where it came from. Perhaps a traveler had happened upon the shade of an enormous oak tree. When he sat down to rest, his flask fell from his pocket and was slowly buried by time. Where was he going? Where was he coming from? The same could be said about a baby spoon discovered in a field. Perhaps the family had gone for a picnic on a sunny afternoon and left it behind. These are the stories that I’m searching for.

Yesterday when I visited the Wright House, I was on the hunt for a narrative. Sure, something of value would have been splendid, but gaining some insight into the family who risked their lives and reputations to help slaves seeking freedom–that’s what I was after.

Within the first twenty minutes, I knelt down to dig a target and out popped a Sloan’s Liniment bottle–unscathed except for a few scratches from my digger. I couldn’t get another good signal on that hole, so I filled my plug and moseyed on to find my next target.

Over the next few hours, my detecting partner and I concluded that the site must have been hunted before–without the knowledge of the property owner. We came to this assumption because we had failed to find anything typical of an old homestead.

Bear in mind that we walked a muddy half-mile through hay fields to reach this secluded homestead. The road that once led to the house was long overgrown and converted to grazing pasture. Someone could have easily snuck onto the property and stole any buried relics. Over the years, vandals had access the property so rogue detectorists and relic robbers wouldn’t be much of a stretch.

In total, we spent four hours at the property. Roman turned up a modern silver plated belt buckle, a fragment from a crotal bell, and some random junk metal. I found my bottle, a frozen potato, and some nails. At one point, my plug produced a fragment of transferware and a chunk of thick aqua glass.

I traded my detector for the shovel. The more I dug, the more I was plucking out pieces of broken china and shards of glass. One of the pieces of china was marked National China–which I dated to around the 1920s. About a foot down, I hit brick pavers that had been laid side-by-side in the same direction. I began to pry out the bricks, but the hole started filling with water. Next time, I plan to bringing a bigger shovel and hopefully the water level has receded.

Now, I spent four hours at the Wright House battling vicious wind and frozen earth, but I couldn’t have been more thrilled with the outcome–to be that close to touching history.

Roman and I may not have taken home any buried treasure, but we took home an experience. I will always recall standing in the woods, listening to the babbling creek and the wind whispering through the trees, and just taking a moment to appreciate everything that happened on that property. That is the best treasure that I could find at the Wright House and I’m more than satisfied with that.

Not to mention, I made some good friends along the way…

[I also wanted to encourage my readers to check out my new column in American Digger Magazine. I’ve chosen to call it Dirt Diaries: Confessions of a Compulsive Digger. I will still be bringing you my blog right here, just not as frequently. So please make sure you subscribe with your email address in the field below.]