The Gold Mine On Our Property

When the plumber first came out this week to see what was going on and come up with a plan, we were walking around near the woods looking for a possible gray water pipe.  We didn't find one, but as we turned around to walk back to the house he looked down and saw the edge of a round piece of concrete.  A lid.

We have been over in this area 100 times and had never seen this thing, but now there was a piece that was partially uncovered.  

My imagination went wild as we had the boys bring us shovels, "What if it is a buried treasure?  Oh, if it's an underground bunker that would be so freaking cool.  If we find money, I'll split it with you."

We shoveled and dug for about 15 to 20 minutes and uncovered the lid completely.

We let our handyman do the dirty work of lifting up the lid.

No treasures.  No underground bunker with 50 year old canned goods.

Turns out that this must be a drainage area for the water that seeps into the ground around the house.  It must get routed here, fill up this chamber, and then leak out when it is full.  We aren't sure why there are brick inside, unless someone wanted to be able to stand inside of it and not drown.

Mystery is solved, and the lid was put back on.  

The History of our Homestead

I've been trying to find the owners of our property since before we closed on the sale.  The last name was fairly common and other than finding information that the woman passed away a few years earlier, I've never been able to find anything.

Then last winter the neighbor told me that the son of the owner lives in a community nearby.  I did some google searching and found his wife on Facebook and sent her an email.  It went to her "other" folder and she never saw it.  Then, a few days ago she joined a community Facebook group that I'm in and I posted in the group and tagged her just to tell her that I'd emailed her.

She replied immediately that her husband (SW) and daughter were excited to hear about the property and that they would come by.  We arranged to have them come by today and when they showed up, I found out that she hadn't told her husband where they were going and this was hard for him.  I really felt for him.

SW was very friendly and just gave off such a good vibe.  They stayed for about an hour telling me all kinds of fascinating information that I would have never known.  I've recently started researching my own grandmother's history and family in West Virginia and learning about the history of my home and the families that are tied to it is just another amazing discover.

The property next door used to have a large house.  I was told this house was torn down just two months before I moved in.  I found out today that the house was actually a school house many years ago.  Back during the time when black boys and girls were not allowed to go to the local public schools, they would come to school next door to my home, in a two story school house.  The school house had a tall cinder block tower with a large bell that rang.  The tower is not there anymore, but the cinder blocks are on the ground where it once stood.  The house also had a well,  not a modern day well, but a hole in the ground where a bucket was lowered to pull water up.  Their septic system drained on my property, where my current garden is.  The people who lived there were related to SW as they were great-great-grandparents (or maybe a couple more greats.)  This house was the summer home for the relatives when they came to town.

Years later, SW's grandparents convinced SW's parents to move here and they finally did.  SW and his father dug out the basement, he told me about how they had to tear a hole in the basement wall when they had a new well dug and the water holding tank needed to be put inside the basement.

He told me that his mother had a garden in the same place that my garden currently is.

I showed him the old wood signs for Bennett Elementary that we found in the woods and he said that his father was an engineer and helped design and build that school.  He had even gone with his father to the school.  I found online that there was an original Bennett Elementary built in 1909, but a new one was built in 1969 and this is the one his father had helped to build.  In 1996 another replacement school was built and so the one that his father had helped with is no longer around.

He told me that the chimney was always leaking and so a new one was built, but he asked if the cast iron stove was still in the house.  It is not here, but I have found pieces of one in the woods.

He also gave me history about the eminent domain issues and that they had won the right to preserve the land and the rural crescent years ago but then a property owner a few properties away made a deal with the developers to let them use his land to build a road to the land they wanted to build upon.  I also learned about other relatives and distant relatives and properties around us.

He said that next time he will go for a walk with us through the woods, where a faint trail still exists, to one of the neighboring properties.

SW's daughter is beautiful, his wife was also a lovely person, and they all just seemed like a great family.  He wasn't ready to come into the house as he had a lot of sad memories about leaving the property and I respected that and I hope that there will be a "next time" like he mentioned.  I hope that he can feel some sense of comfort in knowing that we live here as compared to someone who might tear everything down and start over to just sell to a developer.