The study of history through the excavation of discarded items, exploring people's attics, flying drones, and stuff….
This is an antique powder horn which originally was found in North Carolina. The wooden plug in the end of the horn has a concentric design making it look like a beehive. For this reason, powder horns of this design are known as “Beehive Plug Powderhorns.”
This sweet antique pipe tomahawk was up on Cowan’s Auctions website, where it sold a few months back, with detailed photos and a detailed description, so I thought I’d share. Obviously a lot of research went into the description, and the photos are great. Truly a great example of a presentation-grade pipe tomahawk. And it …
Much of the fun of metal detecting – especially at an historic site – is cleaning up the items, preserving them, and then comparing them to everything else you’ve found. Together, they tell you a story of what happened there long ago.
There are plenty of books out there on swords, powder horns, and other objects. But surprisingly, there’s not a whole lot out there on antique American knives. In his 1984 book, Madison Grant wrote one of the definitive books on antique knives, with pictures of many examples, albeit in black and white, and with a …
Read more#FixedBladeFriday – Who doesn’t love pics of antique knives?
We found some some ladle, or skillet, handles in the yard at Byrnside’s Fort. They’re blacksmith made, wrought iron forged, each with a little rat tail style curl on the end for hanging around the fireplace. I finally got around to doing some preservation work on the handles in the past few days, and they …
A gallery of original tomahawks for the last Tuesday in 2019, which is now Tomahawk Tuesday. Many of these are pipe tomahawks, which if you’re not familiar with them, was a cleverly conceived invention made for the North American Indian trade. It combined a pipe and a metal axe into a single trade item, both …
When the first settlers came into the Greenbrier Valley in the 1750’s, this is likely the type of firearm they brought with them. A civilian owned smoothbore fowler. This longarm is exactly 6 feet in overall length. It has a bore of exactly .70 caliber. It could fire a solid round lead ball. Or it …
Read moreThe flintlock the early Virginia frontiersman likely would have carried.
These items were all found by metal detector by Robert Bennett of St. Ignace, Michigan. They were found at early Native American village locations along the shore of Lake Michigan – mostly in the area of Good Hart, Michigan. They are an excellent representation of the types of European goods which were traded to the …
The Nathaniel Vogler Rifle. Made by the Vogler family of Moravian gunsmiths in Old Salem, NC, sometime around the 1815-1835 time period. The expert silver work was likely performed by John Vogler, master silversmith and engraver, as illustrated by the amazing work on this rifle. You can visit his shop in Salem still today.
Here is a real piece of that period’s American history. This powder horn belonged to John Snyder from the Snyder family of New York. He carved his name, as well as the year 1691 into this horn, and scratched numerous designs and cross-hatching. It is difficult to see in the photos, and much of it is too worn to determine what it says or represents. The year is most likely a reference to involvement in the Jacob Leisler revolt and execution in 1691. Fortunately for our eyes’ sake, there actually exists an 1880 drawing showing the scrimshawing on this powder horn: