When digging the foundation for a garage we found a King George II half penny from the 1740's

What do you mean corner post?I was told the big sandstones in the corners of barn.I got a medal detector too because I was told They found a something here on farm probably from a deserter,from civil war.. Id love to know what.I found a wagon wheel,lots of medal pieces.They say theres a full sized tractor buried here .
Back behind on land we own there was a fair like years ago.I want to go back see if I can find some old coins.

I have the coolest story about some things we found in our 1925 house. When restoring the fireplace facade( some one had covered some fantastic art deco tiles with plaster!!)we pulled off the old mantle to replace it. Underneath was a receipt for 1914, some movie passes for a small movie house which had closed in the 40's some old coins and a picture of an infant in an old style prambulatory(?spelling). We could tell it had been taken in the back driveway outside the house. I put them away in a drawer for safe keeping. Several months later while my husband and I were working outside, two men and a woman walked up and introduced themselves, telling us the gentlemen had lived in the hous in the 30's when they were children. We were very excited to meet them and took them on a tour of the home. They told us some great old stories and gave us some history they knew. As they were leaving, I remembered the things we had found in the mantle. When I showed them the picture, their jaws dropped!. The baby was a picture of one of the gentleman! I gave it to him to take with him and we have struck up an email corespondence. Recently he sent me more pictures of the house he had found and another similar picture to the one I had found. What a cool connection to have someone who had actually lived in this house over 60 years ago!

I found some money in our first house. It was underneath the shelving paper in the closet I was painting. Needless to say, all paper was flying off the shelves after that, but I didn't find anymore. It has been so long ago, seems like is was about $150 or so, some was silver certificate.

We bought our house last winter from the 2nd owner of the house. It was built in 1929 and her family bought it in 1939. We haven't found much, but what I really thought was cool, was that she gave us the original land grant papers. It was just land divided and added onto for almost 50 years before a structure was ever built. She (the lady we bought it from) inherited the house from her parents told us about the fireplace that was added and how all her elderly aunts lived in the house from time to time. 2 of them died of old age in it. No ghosts seen yet, but I do believe there are friendly spirits here. We did find some old religious tracts stuck in the baseboards and some old newspapers, but most everything has been cleaned out. Darn!!! My DS (10) made a time capsule of his stuff and DH put it in one of dining room walls when we had to repair something. We 're still cleaning so who knows we come across something else too.

In my house (now our house) we recently found--drum roll please--a styrofoam cup under the floorboards. They redid the kitchen in what I thought was the 1950s w/ knotty pine paneling. But the styro threw me. I did some research and discovered that it was invented sometime in the 1940s. Can't quite reach the cup, so it will probably sit there another 50 years and still look like it did the day the guy stuffed it in there. Nasty, brutish stuff...

In my DH's house we found a violin that belonged to a step ancestor while looking for that pot of gold. The story goes that the ancestor played the violin until the day his true love died. After that he never picked it up again. It was stuffed in a corner of the attic. We gave it back to the step side of the family, though I would've liked to have kept it.

Years ago, I knew of someone who was restoring a 19th century mansion. While stripping wallpaper he found a murder confession. Being an attorney, he checked it out and apparently there was an unsolved murder matching the info in the note!

This house was built in 1940. I bought it as-is from the estate of the widow who died in 1996.

In addition to the stuff that I knew would be here (some furniture and a shop with old tools and such), I found the following unexpected items:

- small bottle of gold paint, unopened, with a claimed 1 oz of 24 carat gold in it

- 1923 model Breda Mannlicher-Shoener army bolt-action rifle. It was tucked inside a roll of copper screen in the garage. I bought some ammo for it, and it shoots just fine.

- Full ceramic nativity scene in attic, about 12 inches high, made in Japan.

- Opal ring, found in rock garden.

- Some old wood fruit boxes in the garage loft, with colorful labels.

- An old two-handled full length scythe, in shop loft. Still sharp.

- A photograph album with photos that look like they come from the early 20th century. One is of a Portuguese-California cowboy.

Spambdamn Rich-
Oh you are blessed to have such things like those! I would use the items in the house, however as for the gun - find a glass box to lock the gun in and display high on a wall. I always enjoy studying historic items, seems to me today's stuff are not as interesting.

My ex bought a trunk lined with newspaper in the bottom from 1926, right before the depression in 1929. It was the financials section of the Detroit Free Press!

The section also had a few ads for stuff like clothes, and a lot of ads for financial houses.

When we moved into our first house, my wife and I found the following on a hidden ledge inside a closet:

1.) a box of .410 shotgun shells
2.) a plastic package of suppository looking "pills". Upon closer inspection, they were little tubes of spermicide (yuck!)
3.) a very bulky handkerchief unwrapped to find inside ....
another handerkerchief, unwrapped to find inside...........
one more handkerchief, unwrapped to find (my excitement was flying now).........
36 two-dollar bills! If only they'd been $100's.

aerofan999

Our home is 2 ages. First was an 1840 carriage stop general store and post office. In 1915 they attached the live in home.

In the wall of our 1915 home a penny of that year for good luck. It valued at 25 cents. We placed it in an envelope and wrote "Found in 1998, value 25 cents" and replaced it in the wall after renovations.

In the store part which is now our living room, in the old basement under 6inches of earth, a pile of what seemed neatly stacked bottles, some still capped, but none with original contents, but with water rplacing them. Smashed pottery shards.

Apperently there was a wooden box that held them and it rotted away. The storekeeper kept his stock down there in those times with no refrigerator.

Perfect condition whistle bottles, stubby with the paints still on, orange crush in the orange bottles were found and 3 soft drink bottles from local companies that no longer exist.

During alterations, we found a tiny Victorian child's hob nailed boot,hidden under the stairs,the practice of putting a shoe under the stairs, was for good luck in the house, and to ward off evil spirits,this is an English idea.An earthenware wine or water jug was also dug up, in the garden dated about 1700-1800,and pieces of clay pipes are always turning up in the garden, in such quantities, that the house was probably a pub years ago.l have got back to 1740, when trying to date the property.

Our house was built in the 1940's. The only thing I found, while gardening, was an old brass bell from some long-dead horse. There used to be a race track many years ago, about 2 blocks from our house. But I like the idea of adding things! I'll have to plan some nice stuff to stash in the walls or way back in the basement closet.

Written 66 years ago today (found in a stud bay when I recently renovated):

We bought an investment property, a small bungalow built in 1922, twelve-years ago. We had to gut and redo the whole place before we could rent it out because it was in such awful condition. When removing lathe and plaster, we found about 20 of the plaster bags, and about 10 bags that had contained horsehair used in the plaster. We also found about 20 old wine bottles (empty) enclosed in the wall as it was being built. We could tell they were enclosed during construction because the plaster was molded around the bottles and had run down the sides. Maybe we now know why the walls are all a little crooked. In the attic we found the original blueprints, purchased from Sears and Roebuck, and a notebook with receipts for materials. This was clearly not a "kit house" which Sears sold, but only a blueprint, because the materials were from local suppliers. The blueprints called for several windows that were not present, but when we removed the plaster, we found the framers had included openings, complete with headers, in the walls, but plastered over them. A bathroom (with indoor plumbing) was added to the side of the house in 1962 and we found the dated signature of the carpenter (Art Egger) who signed his name and included a note that "Bill Norton is going to do the plumbing." The weirdest thing we found, was a pair of menÂs underwear hanging on nails between two studs, and enclosed inside the bathroom walls. IÂve always wondered if they are Bill Norton's and why someone would do that.

My 1923 bungalow was built by French Canadians but lived in by thrifty and very clean Norwegian/Germans who never left anything behind, unfortunately. I found a 1922 French coin ("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!") in the attic and a spent bullet on a basement rafter. Nothing else.

Our 1910 Craftsman-style home (referred to around here as a Berkeley brown shingle) had been lived in by only one family before us. When we opened up the walls to remodel, we found a lot of old newspapers had been used (for what - insulation?). Also, the original kitchen appliances were still in place, and one of them was something called a "Kohler Electric Sink" - basically, your very first dishwasher! Unfortunately, it was "lost" during the remodel (after we contacted Kohler to see if they wanted it, but never got a reply).

This has been fun to read! My now-husband and I bought our 1st house in 2002, a small house that was was built in 1862. An old couple had lived there for generations, and when one died, the other moved into a care facility, and died later on. The house was sold by the daughter.

No treasures yet, but we haven't done much looking other than under the floors. But while removing the upstairs red-shag carpeting in 2002/03, I found a 1960s Christmas card that contained a LONG hand-written letter from the wife to the husband, telling him that she forgave him for cheating on her and leaving her, and that she may or may not take him back into her life. It is SO sad. I keep it in a drawer and I've often wondered if I should give it to the daughter.

Other neat things we've found: little hand-written notes under the floors naming the dates when they were put in; note on the fridge door lining, and other appliances as to when they were purchased; and Carnegie steel beams in the basement ceiling.
This year we'll be making a door in the bedroom ceiling to access the attic for the first time.....here's hoping! :)

Dont give the daughter the card. She may not know of the affair and probably doesnt need to.

I agree, giving the card to the daughter will do nothing but cause her pain.

We have an old (1840s) farm house. It has been added onto several times from the original structure to the newest which was built around 1930ish. We bought it in 1990 and have over the years completely redone the whole house. Each room usually reveals a surprise of some sort. However our favorite find was one of our first finds.

We were removing a layer of drywall that was over a layer of plaster to expose old brick in our upstairs hallway. I was picking up the pieces as fast as my husband was tearing them down. One was a thin small perfect rectangle that caught my attention. All of the other pieces had been random odd shapes. I cleaned off my goggles to take another look. Turns out a old photograph was tucked in the wall behind the plaster and lath. It was a picture of a naked man! I kid you not. It was taken in a studio with a vanishing wall back drop and columns and flowers on each side of him. It is sepia toned and broken on one corner.

It is framed and hanging in our bathroom. It is such a funny conversation piece. My son has friends over and it really gets their attention.

A lady who was born (1920-1998) in our house took a look at it, a real close look, kind of funny actually. She didn't recognize the guy. She told us interesting stories of our house. We are only the 4th owner, pretty amazing!

Don't worry I'm not going to.

I found my wedding band and engagement ring!
They disappeared about 8-9 years ago. I had let my 2 year old hold them. I knew I took them back from him but couldn't figure out what had happened after that. I thought maybe, possibly they had been in a pocket and then got taken to Goodwill. I was sick about it for awhile and then gave up hope.
Well, a week ago when the contractor was tearing out the old corner cabinet in the kitchen he found an old calender, and MY RINGS!! I must have put them on the ledge and they got pushed over the back. I knew there was a small space there, too, because the calender was given to us by my MIL (museum calender) in 1997 and I had accidently dropped it down there.

And to think!! We might have moved instead of doing the renovations and I would have never found my rings!

The house is a 1906 four-square in Pittsburgh with bay windows and stained glass, big front porch....wonderful old house!

Recent news on Yahoo

Here is a link that might be useful: Diamond Ring!

That is a great story Lazy! I sent my husband that link.

We just finished our bathroom remodel. When they tore down the sheetrock, they found an extra wall behind the wall of the existing bathroom. Not a secret room or anything interesting, just an extra wall. No idea why they would put up two walls. It was not necessary as a supporting wall. The contractor tore it down and it made our new room just four inches bigger. I also found a few buried hand tools in the garden when I was digging. Guess that solves the mystery of where missing garden tools go. Martha says you should paint the handles fluorescent.

In our 1747 home in rural NC....snakes !!!! And every spring swarms of lady bugs emerging from our basrment root cellar !

What a great topic. I have enjoyed reading these entries over more than once.

I guess it's time to add our 2 cents. First the exciting discovery in our circa 1830 house: the 5th fireplace. Earlier house records reported 5, but only 4 were visible. The 5th was behind a plywood wall in the basement. According to newspapers filling the flue, this wall was put up in 1962. The fireplace has not only the main fire box but also a beehive oven alongside the main box. We have had it restored by replacing missing mortar and bricks, but it is not safe for a fire because of the single layer of bricks between it and the sheetrock wall of a 1957 addition.

The less inspiring discovery are the mice that have made homes in the walls and ceilings of the ground floor. The discovery occurred when we went to broil garlic bread in the kitchen stove and smoke poured out -- we were broiling mice as well. We caught a half dozen or so and they are gone now, but we will have to be vigilant in the fall again. We have also gutted the crumbling ground floor walls and suspended ceilings and will replace with sheetrock, but not without installing some wire mesh, plugging holes, etc.

We've amassed quite a collection of household artifacts in the three years we've owned our home:

Two very fifties-looking potholders from an old local business with phone numbers that have the old letter extensions on the front

A silver fork with the family initial of the PO. I used the fork to make a wind chime.

A bullet from a German luger, which I did NOT use to make a wind chime.

An old Pepsi-Cola bottlecap.

One ashtray from the Waffle House.

Twenty six cans of paint, many of which are older than I am.

And the signature of the mason who did the chimney in the cement on top of the chimney cap, as well as the date he finished the job.

This has been a fun thread to read. It's certainly made me appreciate my little bits of household arcana. Mostly what I'm appreciating is that I haven't yet found any of the previous owner's underpants!

In the basement my 1890's Georgian Revival house I found a rattle snake skin stretched and dryed on a board.

When we tore down our little barn the demolition crew found a package of condoms hidden in a tiny crack in the wall.

I really haevn't found much in my old house, but I did find some treaures in one of my older sister's past houses. When I was a teenager, she hired me for the summer to help her renovate a farmhouse built in the 1830s in which no one had lived for 10 years. Needless to say, it was a mess. One of my first jobs was to go into the attic and scrape all the wasp nests off the rafters (it was early spring, so they were all in larval stage). I dropped one down into the insulation. As I was fishing it out, I found a bunch of newspapers and letters from the 1850s and 60s. My sister talked to the local history museum on how to preserve them. SHe gave a few to the museum and the rest stayed with the house when she moved. She thought that the artifacts belonged to the house, not to her.

You wouldn't believe what I found in the basement of my Parent's house. It's where my Father grew up. Mom and Dad moved in in 1999, after buying it from Grandma and Grandpa's estate.

Grandpa NEVER threw anything out, and I mean nothing.

I've spent the last week cleaning out nearly 60 years of accumulated crap. I know some of it meant something to him. He was a mechanial engineer, and could do amazing things, but good lord, why keep the USED sparkplugs, condenser, and ignition points from a tune up you did in 1955?

Anyway...

I found two Baby Brownie Special cameras that belonged to the family. On the other side of the basement I found a photo album that my Grandmother put together (and which my idiot Aunt simply tossed in the basement in the dirt and the damp...) some of the pictures in it were taken with those cameras.

I found a Buick manual for their 6-cylinder cars from 1921. Unfortunately, not in great shape.

I found some badly needed parts for the electrical switches in the house. They date from the early 20th century (approx 1910-1915, probably).

I found many of my Grandfather's annual day diaries from when he was a mechanical engineer at the rayon plant in town. One entry for 1951 recounts my Father getting his learner's permit and driving to the next town.

We moved into our 1916 Foursquare-esque home in 2003. No one had lived there for about a year when we moved in. While cleaning the linen closet (built in at the end of the hallway between 2 rooms) we found:
- a picture of a lady from about the 1970's (based on cloths, furniture and hair styling)
- a tiny amber glass bottle of infant suppositories
- an empty perfume bottle
- a barrette - the red plastic kind with a kitty on it

Then when we added electrical service to the attic we found:
- a bronzed baby shoe
- half a barbie
- random lego pieces
- more hair ties
- 2 pairs of underware (one men's one women's) (ewww)
- a sanitary napkin strap with a product attached (extra ewwwwww)
- empty xxx boxes

When we cleaned out the back closet in the basement we found:
- a dryer from the 1950/1960's
- the old metal sink from the kitchen (about 5 ft long with metal drip pans on each side - best I can explain)
- newspapers from the 1970's
- the xxx video's that were in the empty boxes found in the attic (no, we did not watch them)

While digging in the garden we found an odd shapped bead and a marble.

During the kitchen rennovation we found an old postcard from 1960's that had fallen behind the baseboard.

Wish I could say we found other more exciting stuff, but that's it.

Hi.

Not what we found -- what we accidentally left. (boo hoo hoo)

We left a few valuable things behind on accident. In the attic crawl space on a tiny "shelf" made by the framing studs in the back of the space.

I have wanted to write a letter to current owners (been sold 3 or 4 times since we sold) and ask them to look. Maybe if honest and they find the items they would return them. I know I would, but also don't know many people as honest as I. And, it has been many years ... finders keepsers, I guess. I don't know why DH is not willing to send a letter.

But, DH says no. He just lives with the knowledge that he forgot to pack them. And, as they were his pre-marriage, I have let go of it.

What you ask ... well, the most valuable of the small items we left behind is some gold krugerrands.

Yes, a great find for someone. DH believes that they have been found long by now. I have wondered about it over the years. Who knows -- It was sorta near the back, out of sight from the front, but in plain sight of anyone back there.

boo hoo hoo.

Maybe you could write them a letter and (if you're still somewhat local) see if you could come by to retrieve some items you may have left in the house. You don't have to say what, or where... just that they may still be there and that you're sick about it, etc. If I were the current owner, I'd probably agree to it.

The oddest thing we found while renovating our 1921 Craftsman is a mural, reminiscent of the Great Wall of China, painted on a wall which was covered by fake wood paneling. It wasn't very good, or we might have considered keeping it in what will be the master bath. But it makes a great backdrop for the website my husband built to chronicle our little remodeling project!

Solferino,

Your murial sounds interesting ... wonder who painted it and why.

Yes, we are about 5 miles away from the old house. The attic, however, is in the ceiling of the master bedroom, and would need a ladder to access, so I am a little hesitent to write the letter.

However, if I would have written it years ago, then it would be over and done with. I may still write it. Thanks for your encouragement.

Michele

After removing our kitchen floor and floor joice's we had to level out the dirt before and pouring new footers. In doing so we found an old cane fishing pole.

We bought our 1860 farmhouse two years ago. Everything had to be renovated - we found the house was built with hand-hewn square nails - most of which we kept. Did you know they used to mix horse hair in with plaster? In a kitchen cabinet I found a rare salt box that I ended up selling on eBay for almost $400. The buyer, who collects salt boxes, told me he had been looking for this one for 30 years, and $400 was a steal!!

In our 1920's house in Ontario, we found black boots and pages of dictation. I saved the dictation but threw out the black boots. I have read that it was good luck to put a new shoe in the wall of a new house.

I hate to see this wonderful thread get buried, so I'll post what we found: names and love notes and girls' measurements, which were written on the basement walls and under the kitchen cupboards!
Diane

I can't wait to move into my 1923 house (I close next week) and see what I can find! I know from the real estate showings that the hall coat closet still has the original wallpaper, and that the garage wall is covered with handwriting from the 40s that document things like the dates the apple tree was sprayed and when he saw the first Robin of spring.

we found a grimey spoon in a cold air return. nothing else of real interest. Possibly some original wallpaper in the hallway, its red and pretty ugly.

I was hoping to find more stuff since our house was built in 1909 but it looks like everything that may have been found was already found during previous updates.

we found an old clay pipe with the bowl in the shape of a dog's head in the far recesses of a kitchen cabinet. we also found a piece of the ribbin they cut when they first opened the golden gate bridge in the basement.

In my 1890 rennovated barn: a newspaper from 1951. Very yellow and brittle.

However, the bottle dump has some interesting items. Lots of bottles, most machine made unfortunatly. We did find one odd bottle with the data 1899 written by hand in the glass on the bottom, otherwise, it was machine made.

Also 4 auto plates from 1835. Very rusted an partly eaten, but enough to be of interst just the same.

While ripping out a lathe & plaster wall in a bathroom rehab I found what initially looked like a very old piece of 1' copper pipe with a cap on the end but something was wrong here. It had a small hole about 1/8" diameter drilled through the center of the cap. It was completely covered with a black sooty dust so it was difficult to see what it was intended for. When I touched it i realized it was not attached to anything, just standing there leaning on the stud in the wall so I lifted it out and to my surprise I had an old lever action saddle rifle type BB gun. Out of curiosity I took a rag and wipe it off. It had a bit of very light surface rust but all in all it appeared to be in very good shape.

Having grwon up on a farm in the late 50's & 60's I had my share of BB guns but this one was unusual. All the BB guns I ever saw had a small hole on the underside of the barrel where you poured BB's into the barrel but this one had no hole. How do you load it I wondered? I cocked the action and pointing it at some scrap wood i pulled the trigger, wham, it shot fine, or at least it shot a blast of air, but there were no BB's.

Later that night while sitting at home I cleaned it up and was able to read the manufacturers name as "Daisy MFG, Model 16, Plymouth, Michigan."

I then did an online search for Daisy Mfg and sent them an email to inquire about the history of this BB gun.

They informed me that this was a single shot BB gun originally marketed as "A Daisy for a Buck", thats right folks, the original selling price back in the late 1920's or 30's was $1. They also stated that this was the only saddle rifle type BB gun they ever produced as a single shot.

We live in a pre-civil war farmhouse with a big remodel that occurred at the turn of the century. Beyond that, there were kitchen redo's in the 50's and in the 70's.

We are slowly gutting everything. We have uncovered newspaper clippings from the 50's, toy cars, gum wrappers and screwdrivers with petrified mice, bats and birds! Is that like Lions Tigers and Bears... Oh My?

Our biggest find was the first week we moved in. I was very pregnant and had just had an appendectomy.....We found a box of old coins. Yes, an entire box of old coins my husband and I could not even identify. Books of coins, every denomination from the begining of the U.S.

We called the PO, he came right over, took them, thanked us and left. Never to be seen again....I hope that at least that leaves us with good karma. What were we thinking? We could've paid off the house and had money for gutting.

Other things you ask? A combine and a still.

Heather

Had to add to this post. We have an 1910 house and we decided to build a reconstructed 1825 log house on our lots next door. The land there had been used as a household dump for ?ever and i've found all sorts of clay pipes, china bits, eyeglasses, bottles etc. The dump was originally a foundation for a log building predating the 1910 house. Before we levelled the lot I wanted to find the hidden side of the stone foundation, so I was digging. Thought I had the corner stone--but it was a marble gravestone from 1862. (no coffin) My son found two WW2 howitzer shells--unfired and considered live. (Had to call the defence department to remove--very exiting) And my son also found a Lockport pontiled bottle hidden in the chimney of the log house we dismantled. So so interesting--i'll never live in a modern house!!!!!!!

Does a dead rat and some drugs count???... the drugs we found not long after we bought... the carpet was ewwwwwwww up in the master and i would not leave it so we went to pulling it up and found drugs down in the vents..

Of course we have found other things over time but the newest thrill was when opening up the kitchen wall to figure out what was wrong with the plug that kept shocking people.. Dh opened the wall to trace the wire and found the skelaton of a BIG rat who had been up against a metal pipe when he bit into the wires and fried himself... he was like 12 inches from nose to tail end and was still attached to the wire!.. he must have stunk to high heaven many a year ago!

Maddie

All kinds of boring things!

We did find a glass CROWN brand canning jar, complete with glass lid (and 'preserved' strawberries still inside! They are still intact... just rather dark looking). Various bottles. A lot of square hand made nails. Our beams were all hand made.

We did find a door. When we tore out the walls in the kitchen, there was a solid wood door, intact, including hinges. It used to go to the summer kitchen. But was covered on both the inside and outside. PO (grandma) and FIL vaguly remember it... but moreso from covering it on the poarch side of the house.

Lots of walnuts and eaten corn cobs!