Old pottery

[bachelorsgrove_com]

For those interested in this type of stuff, I found a piece of pottery near the house foundations that has a date on it.

Here is a photograph of it. Any time I find this stuff out there I'm always reminded about how old the area is!


Pete

[Aten]

Thats awesome Pete. I`ll bet one could find a lot of things like that if they look for it. It would be real cool if there were any old pics of those houses when they were in use.

[bachelorsgrove_com]

This is a photograph of one of the two house foundations found west of the cemetery. It is unclear as to which house this is a photograph of, but it is likely the one on the south side to what is the remains of the Midlothian Turnpike. That would be the one usually being labeled as having two wells.

The photograph is of the Schmidt family taken about 1890 and was sent in by family relatives.


Pete

[Aten]

Thanks Pete for the posting of the picture. I think it is so cool that a relative got the picture to you for the site. Man I wish I could of seen the area when it was so young with the pioneer families living there.

[MarkMc1990]

Thats simply amazing! What an awesome souvenier!

I asked this in another thread, but could someone possibly give me some detailed directions on how to find the old house foundations? I've seen I think 2 of the old wells and a small clearing that my friends and I thought might have been where a house once stood. How many confirmed house foundations are there?

[bachelorsgrove_com]

I am working on something for the web to make it easy to find the foundations. Give it some time and you'll see it. But it sounds like you found the foundations anyway.

As for how many more houses?... Actually, if you do a lot of walking you can find various locations not publicized yet. I'm sure many have found the area near the roped off entrance that has A LOT of broken glass and other junk in a "hole." Based on what I can find this area has a lot of stuff from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. I do find some items from the very late 1800s but not very often. At the moment I suspect that this was the remains of an old house but it was used as a garbage pit for a long time. By finding material from the 1800s it may very well be older than the foundations west of the cemetery. It will personally take me a long time to narrow a date down. Old maps didn't indicate anything there even though the two usual house foundations are on the map. Using aerial photos from the late 1930s indicated that something was in use as far as a very small road going to the location (off of the now closed Midlothian Turnpike) but as far as any structure it looked long gone. The little road was probably just an access road to dump their garbage.

At the moment I am not disclosing some of the other locations but once I can find out more information and I am done with removing old artifacts to date and catalog then I will go public.

Pete

[ChicagoWhitesox05]

Dude, the condition you found that in is crazy. If you need help going in the day, just send me a pm. I hate going at night now ha ha