Clearing a Path

[Gordon Gould]

Maybe he took the cover off to show us?

Yes - Thanks for assuming that I have some common sense.

gg

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I think if I had a place like that on my land I would have to buy a metal detector and do some searching. You never know what you might find. Probably a lot of worthless junk but maybe some cool stuff too.

 

[Jaybr]

I think if I had a place like that on my land I would have to buy a metal detector and do some searching. You never know what you might find. Probably a lot of worthless junk but maybe some cool stuff too.

I have one, I’m sure I’ll use it some after we get moved in and things settle down

 

[Jaybr]

I find Civil War history fascinating, and it’s cool to be able to visit the sites where it took place and still contain many of the structures that were there at the time.

Plenty of it around here, I'm about 45 miles northeast of Appomatox. My son lives 10 minutes from the Petersburg battlefield with the crater.

My old place was in Chesterfield and there where graves in the woods behind the house with just rough shaped stones marking them. Not far away, also in the woods were a couple marked headstones. I know at one time that property was one much larger property so the assumption is the poorly marked graves behind the house were slaves and the ones with headstones a few hundred yards away were the property owners.

I had a friend that used to hunt civil war relics at the bottom of the James river just east of Richmond, amazing some of the stuff he pulled out. The confederate army dumped cannons, weapons, supplies into the river to keep the union army from getting them when they took Richmond.

Then theres revolutionary war history in the area too, Yorktown isn't that far.

 

[ultrarunner]

Interesting stuff there. Have you been to the Stonewall Jackson shrine in Guinea Station VA ? It’s cool to see the bed that he laid on when he passed, and the clock up on the mantle, that was there and still marks the time that he made it to the hereafter.

That old house does look like a slave cabin and is similar to one I’ve seen, that is open to the public, at the Bushong farm in New Market VA:
View attachment 2976216

I find Civil War history fascinating, and it’s cool to be able to visit the sites where it took place and still contain many of the structures that were there at the time.

Old graveyards are cool too. Our kids are the 8th generation of our family to live on our farm, way up north, near the Canadian border. It’s pretty neat to be able to ride our bikes over to the cemetery, just around the corner, and see the markers of our ancestors. That of my great great great great grandfather, born in 1790, is the one there with the oldest legible date. View attachment 2976217

German?

 

[wolc123]

German?

Yes, he and his brother sailed over here from Germany and he homesteaded our upstate NY farm, around the year 1825.

There is still a town in Germany with our family name. Someday, after I retire, I may get over there and check it out. Not sure if any of my relatives are still around over there.

 

[MossRoad]

Yes - Thanks for assuming that I have some common sense.

gg

Well I did say "Maybe"

 

[ultrarunner]

Yes, he and his brother sailed over here from Germany and he homesteaded our upstate NY farm, around the year 1825.

There is still a town in Germany with our family name. Someday, after I retire, I may get over there and check it out. Not sure if any of my relatives are still around over there.

I reconnected with a distant relative showing up on his doorstep in Germany about 25 years ago… his side and my side trace back to 2 brothers born in the late 1700’s… one brother his side and the other my side…

It was an interesting get together that started by showing drivers licenses…

Many similarities in music and career paths…

 

[RayIN]

It's only about 18" in diameter. They must have dug it out big enough for a man and then laid the rock and back filled the perimeter on the way up. It is a little over 15' deep.

gg

I have such a hand-dug well in front of my garage, laid up with creek rocks. I have it covered over with large rocks and a circle of Peonies planted around the well, so it's never ran over by accident.
My abstract says the property was initially part of the Wabash and Erie canal land grant from the U.S. government.

 

[wolc123]

There was an old hand dug well just off the corner of one of the old timber framed barns that my great great grandfather had built in the late 1800’s. It had a concrete cover on it that had to have been added later, probably in the 1920’s or so. I pumped water from it on crops a few times, but it never did them much good and seemed to turn the leaves black on pumpkins and other broadleafed plants. The water must have been high in iron or something.

Unfortunately, I had to replace those old barns, because the foundations and roofs were failing simultaneously, and it would have cost a fortune to repair them, compared to putting up a new metal sided pole barn.

After demolition and when clearing the site for the new barn, I filled that old well (about 6 ft diameter, no idea how deep), with busted up concrete. It took an awful lot of that to fill it, and I had to keep adding more, over several years, until it finally stopped sinking in. Finally now, I can’t tell where it was.