About Us

OUTHOUSE DIGGERS/OUTHOUSE BOOTY

What do a:

1.. Loaded 1860’s revolver

2. Human fetus in a Jar
3. An Alabaster Dildo
4. Human Femur Bone
5. A Bitters Bottle Worth $35,000

…all have in common; they were all found in Historical Poo!

We use Plat maps and historical knowledge of the area, and with the help of Marian our new professional poop locator we get permission to search for the outhouses in historical homesteads. Every backyard prior to 1870 had a privy or outhouse that was used for human waste, but what many do not know is that they were essential for garbage disposal,as well since garbage disposal was nearly nonexistent. Each Privy contains interesting relics and a personal secret history from the past, and so you are guaranteed something amazing on every dig!…and with the help of a Local Historian to make the connection to the homeowners the stories that are connected with the item are just as fascinating!

The old outhouses are located using a metal probe and takes a real talent to be able to know if you “struck” a pit…sight, sound and feel are all senses that are used.

Usually they wanted the outhouse far enough from the smell but not to far to walk when  they were” Prairie dogging” or “crowning” ( in the 1800’s they called it “touching the fabric”)

Once the Pit a tarp is set beside where we are going to dig we lay bricks ( excuse the pun) are around the outside of the tarp and then carefully place the cut sod in the order we extract so that it aerates the grass when we lay it back after we are done so that the lawn looks the same as when we started.

Once the sod has been removed we use shovels and another tarp to put the dirt.  When the digger in the hole yells seed…then we know we are in the “butt mud” as it where because seeds did not decompose…at this point we begin using small claws and gently remove the seed layer because that is when we start finding the historical treasures.

There were over 7 million homes in the U.S. prior to the 1870s and all of them had a privy and every one of them has something amazing to uncover with an amazing story to accompany it, giving us an unending number of amazing history with amazing stories.

Each Dig is somewhat of a “trifecta” of history…it isn’t just one story but three:

• Stories around the dig and the diggers
• Stories around the Fascinating items that are discovered
• Interesting stories around the people that lived in the homes. ( the back stories…every home has one:
• The home where the bloody corset with vertebrae still in it and six other body parts belonging to six different individuals….
• The home that a possible human femur was found in the outhouse and it was discovered that civil war training occurred there before there was a home. Could it have been an amputation of a civil war soldier?
• Many times the items found were never supposed to be found….

THE SECRET HISTORY or DIRTY HISTORY:

• The old man’s whiskey and Bitters bottles or large Victorian alabaster dildo ( in the original preachers home
• Baby embryo inside of a mason jar.
• The Loaded revolver that turned out to be a possible murder weapon from the 1860’s …can you think of a better place to hide something you never wanted someone to find?….nobodies going to look there or want to look there!

Many digs come with a mystery surrounding the items we find…one that is often solved after some research with a local historian…finally putting and completing a “historical puzzle”

Almost everyone in the 1700-1800’s emptied there stoves ash into the pits…both for disposal and it served to help keep the smell down….and now that helps to give us a more accurate aging of the pit or of the layer in the pit…we can tell the difference between coal ash and wood ash…wood ash being earlier than coal and therefore an older layer or older outhouse pit.

We also can tell the common history of the different people that lived int he home based upon what we find. i.e.  if we find a lot of ink wells at a certain level/layer in “the Poo” we can usually deduce that they where educated…and depending on whether the ash is wood or coal approx dates and once we connected that with the families of the home we can often find photos etc… of those who lived there and weather they suffered any certain aliments…i.e. on one dig we found 12 bottles of Dr. Kings Remedy for consumption ( of course consumption was TB and there was no cure in the 1800’s…but it didn’t stop many a “Doctor” from selling his/her cure…and most of those cures only contained Alcohol , Chloroform, morphine and cocaine…so it is somewhat obvious why people always felt better ( there was no FDA to check monitor the ingredients and so anyone who wanted to make something in his or her garage could say anything and you would almost always feel better with those ingredients…There is an entire story and fascinating history just behind bottles that we find…especially the medicine bottles…you see the Doctors of the 1800’s might be called the drug dealers of the 1800’s…for example there is an entire story behind Dr. King  who like many got rich off making people feel better with concoctions that included nothing but color and alcohol, chloroform, morphine and cocaine: The Great American Fraud/Chapter 5

When a privy was used, it was usually never disturbed, so it is a chronological record. Each layer represents a time period. It is like reading a book. You can tell a lot about the users according to the products they used, how they fared financially. What ailments they suffered…medicine bottles. Many times with the help of a local historian a historical puzzle is completed with what is found.

Some of the other more interesting finds include:

• Old dentures
• Bottles Corked and full of Urine
• Glass breast pumps
• Glass tampons
• Glass syrines used in brothels for douching
• Bottles most hand blown and sometimes referred to as Industrial Folk Art
• Women’s dress gloves
• Kids china dolls, marbles and other unusual toys

…as you can imagine each of these items have a story and history standing alone