History abounds on the peninsula of Virginia

   By Chuck Welcher

So it was last March when my buddy Bill and I stumbled over an area that produced three months of hunting glory and "my find of a lifetime". Armed with historical maps that Bill had researched and new batteries in our XLT’s we arrived at the 500-acre sight that surely had been hunted many times over the years.

We were aware of some history of the property. A burned home site near a creek, old dirt roads leading to several other home sites, and a bridge that had been burned in the civil war led us to believe that no matter how many times the site had been hunted that there was still treasure to be found.

On our first visit we parked and decided to split up and look for any hot spots. Bill took off to the soybean fields and I headed to a winter garden area at the base of a hill where the old home site was located. The garden had been deep plowed and I didn’t even need a detector to begin finding colonial debris scattered all over the ground. Pipe stems, thick black glass and pottery chards were everywhere. My first signal produced a large pewter button. I immediately called Bill over to begin the scour that this garden needed. Within two hours we had found twenty or so colonial buttons, three Spanish coins, a shield nickel, several musket balls, a few colonial coppers (3 Virginia half pennies and a 1790’s large cent) and other colonial era trinkets.

What a day we were having. Surely things could not get better. Or could they? Bill took off along the creek and produced a few more buttons and a barber quarter. I went out into the soybean field. It must have been radar that took me to my next find. About 50 feet from the garden I got a solid hit that sounded a bit like a button. My first turn of the soil produce nothing. It was that second turn of the soil that released a coin that glimmered of gold. As I stood looking at the half-uncovered coin, I couldn’t help but think that there have been many finds in my 30 years of hunting that looked like gold but was not. Yet I also couldn’t help that increase in heart rate that happens when a spectacular find is lying there waiting to be picked up. I bent down and picked up the coin. It was slightly larger than a quarter and definitely gold. I began yelling like a kid. Jumping up and down until Bill surely thought I was crazy. From across the field he came to join in on the excitement.

Bill is the more knowledgeable part of our team when it comes to identifying coins. He immediately said that it looked British; the bust on the coin was King George III and the date read 1775. It wasn’t till later that it was identified as a Guinea. The value of the find was $400, but the excitement of the find was priceless. Although there were no more gold coins found, we went on to spend many great days at this site finding many more colonial buttons and coins, a WWI era camp site, and other interesting finds. In the summer we returned to find the garden area plowed again and made several more wonderful finds. It just doesn’t get any better than this and you can bet that we’ll be back next year when the fields are plowed!

Chuck Welcher