Given a break..literally
I did this dig with my friend Jahleel… but you can call him Phil. (As in Philadelphia, not the city but the cream cheese). Someone once said he had a body carved out of cream cheese… and that was a guy too… yikes! Anyway, he gave me a call with a privy he had located near his home, so I figured I’d better oblige and go help him dig it. The privy probed out well and the dirt started flying. It wasn’t long before we hit brick and then more brick and… the bricks kept on coming. There was no shortage of glass but why all the bricks? As I was digging down I uncovered a crescent brick wall and then it was clear: we had, in fact, dug down over the wall of a brick liner! But there was glass on both sides! It was easy to see that there were two privies, an 1880 and 1870. The 1870s was the oval brickliner and it bottomed out at 6 ft while the 1880s was only 3 ft deep. While digging it they had broken the wall into the 1870s pit… hence all the loose brick.
The 1870s bricky was really loamy and was easy to empty out but it wasn’t until I got to the bottom that we pulled out a couple of bottles. I’m sure the pit had been dipped as most of the glass was in too terrible of a shape for just being dropped. In the pictures you can see as much as I could find of a very rare ‘Robert Strehlow German Wine Bitters Peoria Illinois’
But without doubt, the catch of the day was a snap case/key mold applied lip Brown’s Oriental Hair Renewer Walker & Taylor, Chicago Ills… check out those s’s… Boo Yaka!
Both pits produced, but obviously the 1870s stuff was more appealing. We dug a total of 24 marbles too.
I can’t remember all the keepers as I let Phil have almost everything for his new hobby!
Stone’s Extract Chicago Ill,
H K Mulford and Co philly amber druggy
Halls Catarrh cure…plus more less-interesting stuff.
The weather in Illinois is getting COLD now; this may be the end of the digging season.