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Found Underground: Artifacts Unearthed at 1750 House {Part Two}

Published on June 24, 2026June 24, 2026 by In The Vintage KitchenLeave a comment

When I pulled up a bone with teeth, the Pit project shut down for a few days.

Between the last post about finds in the Pit and this post, I’ve learned a lot more about trash pits vs. privy pits and the meaning of each in the local landscape as it relates to 1750 House. One surprising fact was that municipal city trash pick-up did not begin in my town until 1972, which means burying household trash in the backyard was still one of the most utilized ways to get rid of waste in the mid-to-late 20th century here in Connecticut. Learning as much, I’m fairly confident now that what I’ve unearthed in the lily bed is a trash pit, also known as a midden, that seems to date, based on objects found so far, to somewhere around the early 19th century, if not before.

The Pit – still easily hidden by so many lilies.

Picking up where I left off at the end of May, the Pit in June, continues to offer up interesting items in all shapes and forms, but pulling up a bone with teeth was one of the more startling finds. Discovered one day after finding three horseshoes, the moment the teeth slipped from a sidewall of dirt, I immediately connected the shoes and the bone. And then I began analyzing the situation. If I found a horseshoe over here, and a horseshoe over there, and a set of teeth across the way on this side, would that then potentially form the shape and size of a horse? It was an unnerving series of calculations. Had I unknowingly uncovered the burial site of someone’s beloved pet or stalwart farm animal?

Anything is plausible when it comes to life lived at an 18th-century house and the grounds that surround it. With a property of this age, one that has been mostly untouched by modern redevelopment, an assumption that love and death must surely have embraced each other across centuries prevails in more ways than one. When my husband and I first moved into 1750 House and were still getting used to the property, we discovered a large stone near a giant elm tree at the edge of the woods. The name Aslan was etched into one side, and the name Hilda was etched into the other side. Both were etched in the same primitive style writing and both were etched near similar spots in the rock, just on opposite sides. There were no dates or any other indication of who (or what) Aslan or Hilda might be, but it was our first introduction into the reality that lives long before us lived and breathed and were remembered here. And that tradition continues. In the four years since, we moved in, my husband and I have buried two poisoned wild crows who spiraled down from the sky one summer afternoon. We buried a wild baby rabbit that had perished after a fight with another animal. We buried an old squirrel that fell from a tree limb and an owl that fell into our chimney only to be discovered a year later. And most sentimentally, we buried our very dearly loved dog and cat in the garden a year apart over Labor Day weekend. How many other cherished creatures were laid to rest here in flower-lined pockets across two hundred and seventy-six years?

Out of respect for whatever the situation was, the Aslan and Hilda rock remains in the same place we found it, but I still always wonder about the story behind them. The bone with teeth was found far from where their rock lays, so it’s probably safe to assume it’s not associated with one of them. But then who else?

After carefully setting the bone aside in a temporary resting spot in the garden, and after consulting many animal anatomy diagrams and charts, I’ve come to the conclusion that these teeth most likely belonged to the jaw of a cow, not a horse, and were most likely the remnants of food waste tossed into the trash pit. For centuries, head cheese has been a delicacy throughout Europe and England. And traditional leather tanning involves utilizing certain parts of an animal to dress the fibers. So it’s relatively easy to understand how a jawbone and teeth could wind up in the Pit along with other evidence of food consumption – mainly oyster shells and other professionally clean-cut animal bones that have been found also. Having said that, this grisly side of farm and rural food life helps illustrate the vast variety of refuse added to the earth long before a city garbage truck rumbled down the lane. There in the Pit, among the cast-asides… the broken dishes, the flatware, the glass lamps, the iron farm equipment, the shoes, the car parts, the buttons, and the kids’ toys would naturally be leftovers from meals prepared and foods consumed. Today, if we had to record all the chicken bones, the fish skins, the beef ribs, the lobster claws, and the shellfish shells consumed over a month or a season or a year, we might be surprised to see what our modern-day garbage pit would look like, too.

Having decided that the teeth situation was one of sustenance or utility and not a burial site, recording of the dig resumed, and a new round of interesting objects came forth from the ground. This past week, I’m excited to share two of the oldest finds so far. Both are pastel-shaded glass jar tops and both were used for canning fruits and vegetables…

The amethyst glass lid might have been part of a pickle canning jar. It dates to the early 20th century. The lid was made by Karl Kiefer Machine Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio, sometime around 1913. It contains a unique design with an embossed circular center and four impressed notches. Included on the glass top are the words Karl Kiefer Patented with a letter P in the center. Karl Kiefer immigrated to Ohio from Worms, Germany, in the 1890s and set up his machine, glass, and equipment manufacturing company in Cincinnati in 1908.

A noted inventor, Karl held over 127 patents throughout his life, all revolving around industries and inventions related to food, mechanical equipment, and chemicals. The style of lid that I found in the Pit was made to fit a unique two-clasp style wire and bale closure system, which he patented in 1913. Below is his original patent drawings for the lid and clasp closure. Although I have yet to find the metal clasps in the dirt, in the second photo, you can see how the glass lid found in the Pit matches the drawing exactly.

The second glas lid I found is a really pretty shade of aqua. It was part of a Millville Atmospheric Fruit jar and is marked with the patent date June 1861. This is the oldest object in the Pit that I have found so far. It was made by Whitall, Tatum & Company in Millville, New Jersey, during the Civil War years. Attached with a thumbscrew metal clamp, once sealed, the jar had a very primitive aesthetic and closely resembles an antique ice hook.

Image Credit: Eric Polk, Orange County Fair, Costa Mesa, CA 2022

I haven’t found the clamp or the jar portion in the Pit yet, but maybe I’ll be lucky and find both. I did, however, find this fun midcentury newspaper article from the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier in Mattoon, Illinois, about a woman in 1951 who still had her mother’s Millville Atmospheric Fruit Jar full of cherries that was originally canned in 1880.

A testament to durability in more ways than one, vintage and antique glass holds up really well over time in the dirt, especially if left in whole pieces. Other finds this week included a clear glass lightning jar top from the 1920s, a whole, fully intact amber Squibb pharmaceutical bottle, and a small 3.25-inch unidentified turquoise bottle.

The Squibb bottle dates to the 1930s-1950s era, and tells the story of the birth of the modern pharmaceutical industry in America. What we now know as Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals was first E.R. Squibb & Sons, founded by Edward Robinson Squibb (1819-1900) in Brooklyn, New York.

After seeing 4/5ths of his immediate family pass away before he was 12 years old, Edward set his sights on a medical career. As a surgeon with the US Navy during the Mexican-American War, he was witness to the ineffective, low-quality, and not-quite-appropriate medications being used to treat patients. Following the war, he set up a lab in Brooklyn in the 1850s to experiment with making pure, highly effective medications for pain relief and anesthesia in order to improve the health of soldiers and citizens. Starting with ether and progressing from there, Edward’s medically sound, highly effective remedies turned out to be lifesavers for the Union Army during the Civil War and made Squibb a household name known around the world. By the 1920s, when the brown bottle that I found in the Pit was made, Squibb was a staple in household medicine cabinets around the country and was producing over 30 different types of remedies and wellness products for retail and medical industries.

Below are two advertisements from the 1930s that highlight Squibb’s vast catalogue of products. It’s interesting to note that Edward gave away his patents for free and was more interested in solving problems and healing the sick than making money from his medicines. The brown bottle I found in the Pit most likely held mineral oil or aspirin.

Glass in all shapes, forms, and colors has a constant presence in the Pit, and along with all white ceramic pieces is the most common and prolific thing unearthed. Aside from the exciting finds of whole bottles and glass lids, about 90 percent of the glass found in the Pit is broken into small slivers and shards, so these pieces are not saved unless it is a fully intact glass bottle neck. I have an idea for these for a future project that involves filing down the jagged parts to a smooth edge in order to make a peg-style knob rack for hanging kitchen linens. I’ not sure if what I’m imagining is going to turn out well in reality, but it would be a fun and functional way to display this colorful collection. So far, fifteen have been found…

Also newly pulled from the Pit this week: more all-white ceramic pieces, including six big chunks of a Homer Laughlin salad plate, complete with a backstamp dating to 1936. Finding it in big segments made it easy to fit it back together again…

More ceramic pieces for the brown and white floral collection were found this past week too. These latest additions yielded the opportunity to start fitting some of the pieces together in order to form a whole object. This one will most likey turn out to be a sugar bowl, a creamer, or a teacup.

It was also a great week for finding more patterned ceramic shards and two more pieces of the porcelain doll head. Now I can start to reassemble her face…

A few big chunks of stoneware pulled from the dirt last Thursday proved to be exciting finds, too. Especially for the crock. In the last post, the stoneware crock (on the left) looked like this…

With the inclusion of the new pieces found this past week, today, it looks like this…

When it comes to ceramics, I never assume that I’ll be able to find all the shards in the Pit to create an entire piece again, but it is exciting and also gratifying to be able to fit these old items back together again in order to see how they originally appeared. This is sort of like piecing history back together, too. The past is so full of broken bits of information and sporadic experiences. Stories from history just don’t generally tend to unfold in complete detail and understanding as from start to finish. It takes a lot of effort and insight (and oodles of research) to get the full story right. I find it very interesting that things found here in the Pit contain manufacturing dates from the 1860s all the way to the 1940s. I also find it interesting that remnants of shoe leather can be found nestled next to cow teeth that can be found nestled next to a delicate porcelain doll head that can be found nestled next to a five pound utiltarian stoneware crock that can be nestled next to a rusty nail or a mattress spring or a horseshoe.

We don’t often tend to walk away from events of the past with a clean break or a universal understanding of what once occurred. But piecing back together these tossed-away fragments of items found in the Pit, in some way, does offer up a greater understanding of history experienced not via reading about it in a book or seeing a setting recreated in a movie, but learning about it in real life under real circumstances via real objects. It’s a tangible way to understand that, at one point in time, it was not unusual to see teeth in your trash.

As for the lilies, the original muses of the Pit project, they are still growing strong and still being transplanted. As of this writing, I’m about 2/3rds of the way through the bed, and am happy to say that all the ones that have been transplanted thus far have taken up residence in their new garden spots in the most enthusiastic of ways. Some are even forming flower buds.

Transplanted daylilies share a bed here with yarrow, coral bells, and calendula.

Although the sidewalls have been expanded, the deepest part of the Pit still stands at 27 inches. This would be a mere top-layer sliver if it were a traditional privy, which can reach depths of 20 feet below ground. It is also still a high-line layer for a more modest trash pit, which generally tends to be anywhere from 3-6 feet in depth, so there is lots of digging and discovering left to do. In the meantime, I’ve figured out our plans to turn the Pit into a water feature once the archeological dig is complete. This is the inspiration for the finished project…

More discoveries from the Pit are coming soon. In the meantime, thank you so much for all the enthusiastic comments and emails regarding this project. I think it’s pretty exciting to be learning all about the house, the property, and the previous occupants at 1750 House in this new way, and I’m so glad that you are enjoying it too.

Until next time, cheers to the Pit and to the past residents of 1750 House for showing us more about daily life (and culinary adventures) than they probably ever actually intended.

{Note: This is an ongoing series detailing all the items found so far in a recently discovered early 19th-century trash pit located at 1750 House. If you’re new to this story, find Part One here.}

Found Underground: Artifacts Unearthed at 1750 House {Part One}

Published on May 31, 2026June 5, 2026 by In The Vintage Kitchen6 Comments

New Wharf Pottery dinner plate, 1878. Poison bottle, 1920s. Clay pipe, mid-1800s. Japanese teacup, 1940s. Had I known that the overgrown lily bed would turn out to be such a storyteller, I would have started transplanting the bulbs the first year we moved in.

In our ongoing attempt to find out more about the past lives of previous residents who have lived at 1750 House over the past two hundred and seventy-six years, the garden bed lying just forty feet from the back door has become our greatest historical resource yet. As it turns out, nothing offers up more details about the intimacies of domestic life than an old trash pit covered by flowers.

The first spring we moved in, it was April. The trees were bare. The grass, a tawny blanket. Hard rains made mud puddles of dirt pathways, and the ground floor of the woodlands was packed down with layers of faded fall foliage from the previous autumn. As the weather warmed, each passing day magically transformed the landscape. New delights and discoveries turned up everywhere. We learned that the azalea bushes out front would bloom with bright purple puffed flowers. That daffodils would shoot up in a big clump next to the driveway. We learned that the spindly tree next to the garage was a lilac. That just beyond the grass’s edge in back small clusters of white, vanilla-scented wild roses would climb to the sky on thorny stalks. We learned that the leaf-littered woods would fill with wild, unmanaged growth so dense that it would eventually create a private cocoon around the house. And we learned that the chunky green spikes shooting up through the soil next to a dogwood tree at the side of the back property would become a large, lush garden bed waving vermillion colored day lilies like festive flags.

That first spring in the garden, it was surprise after surprise. We had no idea what sort of garden we were working with when we moved in, but once the season turned to summer and the landscape grew up around us, we could see everything that we were working with. Or so we thought.

A portion of the lily bed that first spring.

As the spring passed to summer and the lily bed turned from small shoots to a fully filled out bed, lush like sea grass, it began sending up the lilies. One lily, two lilies, seven lilies, twelve. As true daylilies, petals unfolded in the morning and withered by nightfall, only to be replenished by a new set of blooms from other stalks the next day. Only we had one problem in this magnificent bed of many. The next day, no lilies bloomed, and none thereafter. A giant bed, kidney-shaped and measuring roughly 26 feet in length x 17 feet in width, should have produced dozens of daylilies, not just one. Realizing that they were probably overcrowded and in need of some dividing, it was added to the project list for fall transplant time. For the rest of the summer, the lily bed sat in wavy, long-leaved sea grass fashion and acted as a refuge for rabbit families, chipmunks, baby birds just learning to fly, and a nut storage facility for the squirrels.

Last year’s Lily – a wild baby bunny loved to dart in and out of the lily leaves.

Fast-forward two more years, and the lily bed dividing project was still on the to-do list. The thing I’m learning about renovating an old house and establishing a permanent garden is that there is always a small window of second-guessing a first decision. No matter how big or how small the task, and how confident we are at going about it, a new creative idea always seems to zip in at the last minute and propose a question that causes a rethink of the entire project. And then we find ourselves sitting with these thoughts for quite some time while the project waits. Since the butterfly effect takes full effect in the garden, I’m always trying to think through how changes will alter the rhythm of the landscape and upset the natural order. In the case of the lilies… what if by moving them, we uproot the rabbits’ safety zone that they have relied upon for years?

Last fall on a beautiful, cool, crisp Saturday morning, as a hawk flew overhead, I spotted a big rabbit, maybe Lily’s mom, dive into a hole under the woodshed that we had built the summer before. The shed sits far away on the opposite side of the yard, far away from the lily bed. In that moment, I realized that bunnies were quite resourceful all on their own and that they could find plenty of places to hide. Flowers didn’t need to be sacrificed at their expense. The choking lilies had to wait no longer. Decision made, shovel in hand, I started at the end of the lily bed closest to the house and furthest from a poison ivy patch creeping along the far edge.

The first shovelful brought up what I suspected, a dense mass of tangled tubers. The next shovelful brought a second mass, but also something else…. a dozen pieces of broken pottery shards stuck in a clump of dirt. Had it been one piece of pottery, I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But the fact that there were 12 pieces all stuck in one softball-sized clump was intriguing, especially because daylilies sit very close to the top of the soil, only about 2-3 inches below the surface. An easy discovery practically begging to be found. On close inspection of the pieces, some had patterns – florals and stripes similar to styles on the antique dish patterns available in the shop. A couple of the pieces were double-glazed… old crookery, thick-walled and heavy. The next shovel-ful brought up more daylilies and more pottery shards, along with a fully intact glass bottle and the barrel of a clay pipe. Twenty minutes later, the wheelbarrow looked like this…

Uncovering such a wealth of man-made artifacts in under an hour was all the fuel I needed to continue with gusto on this transplant project. The more I dug out daylilies, the more objects I found underground. Bottles, whole bowls, flatware, a doll’s head, mason jars, glass fragments, unidentifiable metal objects, bumpy and bulbous with rust, horseshoes, nails, pieces of leather footwear, buttons, stone crocks.

That is when I realized I had found an archive… that the lilies were covering over an old privy or trash pit for 1750 House, which made complete sense given the location and the distance from the house. The project then turned two-fold. Instead of simply spending an autumn weekend transplanting lily bulbs, I was embarking on an amateur archeology dig, uncovering hints and clues about life lived at 1750 House decades and maybe even centuries ago.

Excited to share all these finds with you here on the blog, I’m creating a new series detailing all that is discovered in this artifact-revealing project. By sharing the history of the pieces found, I’m hoping that by the transplant project’s end, we’ll be able to piece together (no pun intended) some real character sketches of the people who lived in the house long before my husband and I ever moved in. Already, I’ve learned a slew of interesting information.

The Home Rule clay pipe (pictured above) dates to 1850 and was used for tobacco. Made in Scotland and exported to America, it was a political propaganda tool that Irish immigrants used to show support for Ireland’s independence from British rule. Home Rule stood for home government and a separation from the British in regard to religion, secession, and land reform. Equivalent to wearing an activist t-shirt today, smokers who chose Home Rule pipes were making a statement about Irish solidarity. I recently learned that in 1850, 1/4th of my town’s population was of Irish descent. The pipe offers a clue that perhaps an Irish family once lived here at 1750 House around the mid-19th century.

A little tricky to see, but it says Home Rule inside the circle.

Likewise, the 1920s poison bottle once held Bowker’s Pyrox, a popular agricultural pesticide and fungacide containing lead and copper sulfate. It was used on potato crops and orchard fruit trees as a way to ward off coddling moths and blight. This bottle offers another clue as to past gardening endeavors here at 1750 House.

All of the pieces unearthed so far are just the tip of the iceberg. About a third of the lily bulb population was moved before the first fall frost came, but once the winter weather set in and the ground froze, the dig had to be put on hold until this spring’s thaw.

The last of the digging just before winter.

Over the winter holidays, I cleaned all the pottery pieces I had found thus far and organized them in separate bins and baskets according to like relationships. There was a bin for ceramic pieces with backstamp marks, a bin for cup handles and knobs, one for decorative glass shards, one for pottery pieces with patterns, and a much bigger basket for all-white pieces.

The majority of the ceramic pieces found so far have been all-white and exist in various stages of wear. Some are stained red from iron, others are just thinly sliced flakes or pockmarked pieces artistically worn by weather and time. To give you an idea of just how many shards I have found so far, the basket containing only the all-white pieces currently weighs 27 lbs.

In comparison, the box with the patterned pieces only weighs 4.6 lbs, so you can imagine the excitement when a bit of color pops up in the dirt. In organizing all the ceramic pieces in this way, I could see that many of the patterned pieces matched. Below is an assortment of brown and white florals. If you look closely, many pieces contain the same pattern, but not all.

I then further sorted all the pieces not only by color but by specific pattern too, just to see if I would be able to fit any of them back together like a puzzle in the hopes that they might form whole objects. I was in luck twice with the blue pieces. What started as a pile of flow blue…

turned into an almost complete dinner plate. It was made by New Wharf Pottery in England in 1878. I’m really hoping I’ll be able to find the rest of the pieces of this plate so that I can glue the whole assembly back together and frame it in a shadow box for display in the house.

Here’s another example of a vintage 1940s Japanese teacup that also had a lot of matching pieces. You can see some of them in the dirt photo shown above, just as they appeared in the ground. Piecing them back together, I was so excited that it actually formed a whole cup minus the handle. To hold each piece in place while fashioning the fit, I used blue painter’s tape, but like the dinner plate, this will eventually be glued together as well.

Other pieces I’m working on puzzling back together are a double-glazed brown and grey stoneware crock, a blue and white striped and sponge-painted mixing bowl, a tall blue and white striped stoneware pitcher, and a floral-embossed cream and sugar set made of milk glass. These are slow going as pieces of each have been found very randomly here and there during the digging process.

Depending on the original length and diameter of the privy pit or the trash pit, you can understand how some things, like a teacup, could be tossed in and broken into pieces while remaining relatively in the same spot, which is why I may have had more success with finding almost all the shards of the dinner plate and the teacup in the same area.

Trash pits were more sprawling in shape, more like a depression in the ground where items were tossed rather than the traditional privy pit, which had defined edges, a distinct round, square, or rectangular shape, and was usually lined with brick, wood, or stone. Based on the size of this dig-site and that I found pieces of the mixing bowl and the large pottery crock several feet away from each other, I suspect that this area has the appearance of a trash pit as opposed to a privy. Although the two can intermingle, it will take more and deeper digging to find out for certain.

As of this last day of May 2026, the project is still ongoing. About half of the daylilies have now been transplanted, and what my husband and I now affectionately refer to as “The Pit” has become a substantial hole in the ground. Every time I get a spare 30 minutes, I send the shovel into the dirt and still come up with new finds.

While the size of the hole is now at officially intimidating proportions, history and curiosity propel this project past any of those second-guessing “what if ” questions that have plagued progress in the past. After all this unearthing of domestic life, most likely when the archaeology project is complete, we will transform the Pit into a small pond or water feature that will aid wildlife and create a peaceful resting spot in the yard. As for the transplanted lilies, they are all settling in nicely to their new areas around the property. No blooms yet, but maybe next year, once they are established.

Some of the transplanted lilies found a new home by the back patio.

I can’t wait to share more finds with you from the Pit! In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or questions about this project, or if you’ve had a similar experience, please share your story in the comments section.

Cheers to new discoveries, to the Pit for providing us with a wealth of real-life stories, and to the bunnies for understanding that history has a hiding place too.