# Privy digging in New England



## downeastdigger (Feb 12, 2006)

Hi Guys,  getting ready for some snow up here.   I'm wondering how I could start a catagory on here where during the course of the year, people including me could report in on present and past PRIVY digs that they have partaken in here in Northern New England.  I made it my mission 3 years ago to devote my digging time to answer the question " Are there privies full of bottles to be dug here in Maine, NH, northern Mass.  I've dug dumps, land fills, ravines etc for 20 years with great success, but if there are privies to be had out here, I want to dig them !

 I took a trip out to Syracuse to visit digging buddies, and to accompany them on a genuine permission style privy dig.  I told them I would take no bottles, I just wanted to see what a deep, lined,  old privy was like to dig.  We probed our way down through 2 feet of regular topsoil in the middle of a yard, ( using an early map to locate the exact spot).  I was having a hard time believing there was a privy there, but my buddy insisted.  Finally after over 2 feet of regular clayish dirt, the next shovel full came up as white wood ash.  I was amazed.  We did the whole deal, finding the 4 walls, cutting sod onto tarps, digging through 3 more feet of ash, until a 1 foot deep trash/ seed layer appeared. Nothing in the privy was NEWER than 1860, so every item in it was pontilled.  There was lots and lots of china, and several, not tons of bottles, but some good ones.  

 Since then I have been determined to find what privies are up around where I live.  I have had many permissions and probed many yards, but with limited success.  I did however find privies with trash in them, so they are indeed here.  

 Anyone interested in this?  I could start off the catagory with what I have found ( and havn't found) so far in terms of NH/ Maine privies.  I have a few pics I took, and pics of the bottles I found, but they aren't too impressive.  Still,  all it would take is that one 1850 deep privy with 50 pontilled bottles,  and it would make all the work/research more than worth while.
 Let me know what you think.  We could make it a challenge to see who finds the best New England privy in 2006.
 Take care, Bram


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## bearswede (Feb 12, 2006)

I think it's a great idea, Bram...

 Maybe the weekend of the show all the forum members there can get together over beers and talk it up... I bet there's some sweet privies in and around Old Deerfield here in western MA...

 Ron

 PS... If any deep, wet ones are encountered (Cap, bite your tongue) we could send Wayne down in his diving gear... ROR


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## Mainepontil (Feb 12, 2006)

Guess I better break out my Sanborns. []


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## portland med. man (Feb 12, 2006)

here`s one we dug in south portland in maine pontils apt. building ....


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## capsoda (Feb 12, 2006)

Hey Ron, Beers is always a good idy.[8D]

 And my wife threatened me if I make comment o n the utter ting.[&:]


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## NH Bottle Diver (Feb 12, 2006)

We're in, my dive and digging partner (Diverdown2) and I have been aquiring bottles the hard way for 13 years now. I just got digger o'dells privy diggin book and we plan on digging up central NH this spring (got the excavator on order)


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## Caretaker maine (Feb 12, 2006)

Maine seems to have as many bottle digger as it has snow flake , wait til April, there will be alot more of them, Bram , you ever talk with Jack Pelleter, I learned of him down in Keene years ago, when I went to the bottle show there, I lived 5 miles south of Keene for 25 years, guess he's runs a club up here


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## downeastdigger (Feb 13, 2006)

Hi Pontilled Med Man,  thanks for the privy pic.  That is the first New England privy I have ever seen a picture of, aside from the ones I've dug.  How deep did it go?  Any whole bottles?


 As I said, I have been digging for 20+ years,  but have had New England privies as my obsession for only a couple of years.
 Here is a list of what I have found in terms of PRIVIES in Maine/ NH  so far...

 Dover NH   -  Wood lined ( wood was rotted away mostly)  side by side holes, each  one was
                    about 3 deep, and 4' X 4' square.  They were about 6 feet off the back of a
                     small house.  The bottles were stacked tightly, pulled out about 70 bottles, but
                     most were unembossed 1880-1890 medicines.  It did have one unembossed
                     8 sided aqua pontil med about 7" tall,  and a pontilled Family Hair Dye bottle.

 Dover NH   -  Two small holes,  I dont think they were lined,  they seemed to be just a dug out


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## downeastdigger (Feb 13, 2006)

(sorry pressed the wrong button)
 anyways, they seemed to be just dug out shallow holes, they were  just about 2 feet deep
 and about 4' X 3'  square.  They were full of tree roots, and the digging was very hard.  They 
 were very early holes, and had early china and clay pieces.  The whole bottles included about 8 common medicines, 3 pontilled puffs, a clear cathedral cologne, and the best hole bottle was an early clear/flint glass " Dead Shot for Bed Bugs from Vermont.  There were 2 broken purple Tebbits Hair renewers, and shards from an amber eagle flask.
 These holes were about 40 feet back from the house, along the back property line.

 Exeter NH -  A very wide privy, about 10' by 10',  only 2 or 3 feet deep though.  It was within the "L" of a very large estate.  I dug about 100 bottles from it, mostly small and aqua.  I took home about 30, if I remember right.  Many of them were local druggist bottles embossed , from a druggist that was just up the street.  There was also one very interesting bottle, it was an aqua umbrella ink, with an IRON pontil.  I've never seen that before.  Only one other pontil shard was found.

 Exeter NH - Two other very early homes, probed the yards til my arms fell off.  I found one 
                  "pocket of trash" in the yard, but I can't call them privies.  They were where the 
                    privy would have been, but they were more like a 2 foot deep round hole, 
                   irregular in shape, no definition to it.  One had turn of the century bottles, no 
                   keepers, ( but a top to a stoddard flask in the mix).  The other was very early,
                   and had no bottles or bottle pieces, only ash and very early pottery shards.

 Eliot Maine -  I probed a yard, but found no privy.  I probed a spot behind a tree in the corner 
                   of the yard,  an hit glass about a foot down.  I deduced later that the privy was
                  attached to the large house,  and the privy was cleaned out and dumped regularly
                   into this " clean out hole ".   I've been told that a house like this might have had
                   a large box or basin under the outhouse hole,  which was regularly dragged by a
                    horse up the hill and dumped in a hole.  This hole yielded quite a few very clean
                   aqua smooth based bottles, mostly common ( Johnsons Anodyne, Kilmers, etc)
                   many unembossed, a couple of pontilled shards.  One good bottle that came out


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## downeastdigger (Feb 13, 2006)

damn, I pressed the wrong button again...

 anyways the one good bottle there was an rare aqua pony soda from Portsmouth ( Hilton )
 That clean out hole was about 50 feet from the house, at the corner of the yard.

 Portsmouth NH -

 This was a killer, it was the one and only "lined" privy I've found in New England,  and it was huge, and behind a 1700's house.  I found it with a long probe,  and followed the probe up with a post hole digger to get a sample down deep and at about 4 feet down and pulled up the top of an aqua pontilled ink!   I thought this one was going to be my Holy Grail !  It turned out to be EMPTY !  That was the bad news, the good news was that it was a deep rock lined privy, full of ash, so it let me know that there are deep lined privies in the area,  and I cant help but believe that some of them are loaded  with bottles ( right?).   The hole was about 6' by 6' square, and
 about 6' deep before we hit water.  The bottom of the pit when we reached water was a layer of gravel or crushed limeston.  I probed down into the water, and wasnt hitting anything but gravel as far as I could probe.
 The hole was full of ash.  I did find one amber seam sided flask, which was cracked.  I also found a shard of a large pontilled demi john,  and it had graduated numbers in it that had been scratched into the glass.  It was very interesting because the scratched numbers were in a 1700's looking style of writing.  I have it on my mantle in the living room now.

 So thats my whole inventory of Privy digging in New England so far.  I had taken some pictures of the Portsmouth hole, but the disk got currupted.  

 I'm anxious to hear any other New England privy stories,  see photos, listen to your opinions about whether most homes around here had dug, lined privies, or if there was just a clean out tray that was dragged from under the privy hole, etc etc.   
 Thanks for reading, if you got this far !  
 Bram


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## capsoda (Feb 13, 2006)

Hey Bram, One of the problems in Pensacola is that they had outhouses attached to the house with a barrel under it. A city sanitation worker would come around and empty the barrel ever so often. Sure cuts down on the number of privys to dig. Wonder where they dumped the barrels?

 Might need to find out.


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## bearswede (Feb 13, 2006)

Honey wagon hole...


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## southern Maine diver (Feb 13, 2006)

Hi Ron...

 Did somebody mention WATER...or suited up?   or diving gear?[&:]

 Wayne


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## madpaddla (Feb 13, 2006)

Hello All:

 How far at most can one expect to find a privy from the house?  Knowing that there were houses scattered everywhere, some with no traces at all, privies are waiting to be found.

 At least here in CT, I am for certain that we have more trees and woodland now than we have in almost 200 years.  Due too the lack of farming now compared to then.  Walking through the woods, there are stonewalls everywhere.  Why are they so elusive in such a well documented area such as New England?

 Madpaddla


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## capsoda (Feb 13, 2006)

Hey Ben, Look good around the stone walls. People would just throw there trash over the fence too.

 Privys were located not to far but far enough. Not to far for those freeeeezing winter nights [&:] but far enought for those hot smelly sumer days.[:'(]


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## downeastdigger (Feb 13, 2006)

Hi Mad,
  I have come to know that every house back before plumbing had a privy, but not necessarily a "dug" privy.  Privies on farms usually weren't deep dug holes, but just a box underneath that got emptied out, or sometimes they were on the edge of a hill, and they would just oooooze down the side of the hill  ( sorry if that was too graphic ).  The point being, that farm houses generally didn't fill privy holes with trash, they carted all their trash to the edge of their property to a dump site, or dumped it in a river to be washed away, or maybe burned it once every season or so in their yard.

 In the more densely populated areas, you couldn't do any of those things, so the idea of having a 6 foot deep privy hole made sense, and filling it with trash, and ash from the fireplace is something that happened when houses were close together.  I try to find the "village center" of each town up here in NH/Maine.  Then I use maps and find spots that had streets set up in a grid, with back to back houses where people couldnt dump their trash at the end of their property cause it would be in the neighbors yard.  These are the best prospects for privies with trash.  
 I'm still learning after all these years.  Cant wait for the "thaw".
 Bram


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## portland med. man (Feb 14, 2006)

me and maine pontil have done a few privies in maine ... and he probably has pics i think i may have a few more but.... privys are out there.. alot of them were shallow because of the rockie soil and alot of them were tray privies which were very common in maine ... i`m sure there is plenty of them out there but with the rockie content up here .... they sure are hard to find unless your one with the probe and did your homework and a little luck ,,, i`ve had some good luck with privies and trash pits in citys like portland and biddeford it`s all about research and persistance....


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## Caretaker maine (Feb 14, 2006)

Bram, if you find out when plumbing went in in each town, then look at a map with houses on it a couple of years earlier, they should all have had privies in some way of another, did public sewage go in at a general time to all the places around here?, I'm going to start calling all the town hall and start asking and look for the age appropated maps, the way I figured there are thousands of privies out there, wonder if the old timers dug them during the great bottle dig of the 60's and 70's


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

HI Caretaker,
 I am of the opinion that privies were hardly ever dug back in the 1970s around here.  There were so many great surface dumps to dig, with tons of bottles.  I think we are scratching the surface as far as privy digging goes around here.  I dont think there were deep privies filled with trash like there is in Brooklyn and Cinci etc,  but I think there are a few like that, and probably many smaller ones.  It only takes one good one full of pontils to make it all worth while!
 Bram


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

I dug through my desk and found a disk with pictures of a privy I dug last spring,  it was a good one with lots of bottles..

 This first one shows the house..


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

Here is the back of the house and yard,  I probed the whole thing before I located the privy up next to the house in an "L" of the house...


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

Here is the L of the house.  The trash went about 2-3 feet deep, lots of roots, and no defined walls to the privy, other than the house foundation itself...


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

Boy seeing these pictures is TORTURE..  Cant wait to dig.
 This one is just about the extent of the hole.  I couldnt square it off very much because of some thick roots.  There was no sod to replace, because it was a leaf covered area, maybe 6" of rotted leaves, mulching down what would have been grass...


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

AS FOUND..
 Aqua umbrella  IRON PONTIL ( Ever seen one?)  It had no damage, but after a few month it developed a large crack while on my shelf.  I'm wondering if they discovered that using an iron pontil on such a small bottle created instability , so they changed and used a smaller pontil rod surface...  just a thought.


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

Four of the better finds,   a very rare Wetherells Sarsaparilla from Exeter, with patent date embossed on the SIDE SHOULDER of the bottle, as well as a chamferred base, very unique.  Also the IP umbrella, a smooth base umbrella and a nice US Treasury ink.
 What a fun dig...


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## downeastdigger (Feb 14, 2006)

One of my good luck charms  

 last picture, I promise

 take care, Bram


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## capsoda (Feb 14, 2006)

Hey Bram, Check ot maps of the business district of local towns. The bars, hotels and line houses usually had deep two or three holers and they are usually full of great stuff. Some of them may even have trash pits full.


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## appliedlips (Feb 21, 2006)

Bram,

      Cool topic,I believe I emailed you after a trip to Dover a year and a half ago.Me and my father in law dug several on a lot in Dover.The lot was 1700's but had an 1880's house on the backside of the lot.We found two early holes,both were barrel lined and dated back to 1830 or older.Both had been dipped.One produced no whole bottles but had shards of a Charter Oak flask and a beaded edge double eagle.The other produced a Stoddard whiskey,a couple blackglass ales and a few more bottles.Both were about 4 ft. deep.The encouraging sign was a 1885-1910 woodliner 4X6' rectangle and went 6 or 7 feet deep.It produced alot of bottles with a couple nicely colored blob beers the best finds.It showed no sign of being dipped and had a healthy seed layer for even a midwestern privy.I probed a stone liner on the lot next door that I bottomed a six foot probe in.Never got a chance to dig it as it rained for the last 2 days of the trip.You keep at it and you will find that one 1830's-60's hole that make all the midwest and N.Y. diggers jealous.Take care,Doug


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## bottleslayer (Feb 23, 2006)

whats down easter digger complaining about? I don't know how to probe or 
 realy a place to probe! Does Maine got any clubs up Bangor way?


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## portland med. man (Feb 23, 2006)

dont have any ideas of shows or clubs up there but i bet there`s some fine diggin up those parts and probably fairly undug i found some broken pontils down bye the river up there in my first ten minutes on foot the first time i went up there.. sure would love to dig a perkins pulmanary balsam op...up there...


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## southern Maine diver (Feb 23, 2006)

Hey John...

 Excuse me, but did you say "RIVER"   [8|]   Water?   [8|]   Pontil?...[8|]

 Diving? Finding?  Bottles?  Underwater?  I think I'm having an orgasm................[&:][&:]
 Maybe a  "WWWWET" dream... get it (water, diving, bottles...) get it?[]


 Wayne


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## capsoda (Feb 23, 2006)

Hey Wayne, Snow is water. Throw some bottles out in the snow and go divin in a snow bank.[sm=lol.gif]


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