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Half Real

This may not be the most exciting story to the rest of the world but for me it was a very fun and exciting day. I had been invited to come along on a hunt that seemed like a good oportunity. This was because the location was an old Mill that was built in 1841 in Dodge county Wisconsin. The five people that were to be hunting all got together at the house of the person that owns the property about 7:30 Saturday. It was a great day for hunting with the temperature in the mid 60's and a mostly sunny sky. Shortly after we got there the owner showed us what he had learn about the property. The first thing he told us was that the Mill was not the only old building that used to be on the property. Next to the Mill was a Black Smith shop and a Saw Mill. He also showed us an old book with many pictures of these old buildings. On top of that, we saw there was a dance hall and a general store! In fact, there was a population of around 190 people in this little location in the late 1800's. But today only a few old houses still remain. Seems we had a real ghost town and we had permisison to hunt almost half of the old town!!!

There was a lot of excitment about this time and the five of us and the owner were ready to head on over. Oh boy can things change in 100 years! What was an open field and hill with a medium sized river flowing thru had turned into a large creek with extremly heavy vegitation and only portions of the foundations remained. The owners house was only a few hundred feet from the location of all of these old building but as we went out his back door we couldn't even see the river because of the trees. As we walked over to where the mill had been I suddenly noticed that the rock fence we had just climbed over was actually the dam used to create the pond for the mill. After crossing a "Bridge" we finally came to the Mill location. Well, we started right in. At first not much came out. An old axe head was found, then a piece of float copper, and lots and lots of old square nails and iron. But along the top of the ridge near were the old "Swimmin hole" used to be I got a nice clear signal. At about 4 inches a thin silver disk appeared. It was about the size of a dime and it had definatly see better days as the images on it were faint at best. At first I thought it may be an old dime but it had no clear image on it so my next thought was that it may be an old trappers tag. But, on closer examination I saw it was extreamly worn but a partial outline of a bust did show. Could I have found a bust dime? On the back was a partial symbol that was definatly not part of a US dime. Then there was that hole near the edge just above the head. Hummm What was this?

A short time later I showed it to one of the other hunters and by luck it turned out he was one of only two other people he knew of in Wisconsin that had ever found one of these therefore he knew exactly what it was. I was told it was a Spanish Half Real possibly minted in the late 1700's, we couldn't get the exact date as it had long ago worn off. And, because of the hole it had he beleived that this was most likely worn by a local indian in that time period who had most likely lost it long ago. Although these types of coins may be a bit more common in other parts of the country here in Wisconsin there wasn't a lot of development in the early 1800's. Infact with a few exceptions this was still a pretty wild area then.

We did find other coins that day including a early date Merc, a Barber dime, 5 indian pennies, as well as other coins but unfortunatly this was mid May and the under brush had grown to the point we counldn't swing our coils in 90% of the area we wanted to hunt. So, it was planned, with the owners ok, that we stop back again next year, but earlier in spring, so that there would be a lot less plant growth to deal with and a much better chance of finding more goodies!

Below are some pictures from that day

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