|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
News
History sought in old privy holes : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisHistory sought in old privy holes
| Diggers in quest for early Montgomery artifacts
| by John Etheredge
| 10/5/2006
|
Tom Majewski of Naperville and two colleagues dare to go today where few men would have gone a century or more ago.
Over the past three weekends, Majewski, along with John Wilson of Marengo and Dan Puzzo of Woodstock, have been searching for and then digging up privy holes in several yards in downtown Montgomery.
Privy holes, for those accustomed to the privacy and convenience afforded by modern indoor plumbing, are the holes over which outhouses stood.
From the time the village was settled in the 1840s until the 1920s when modern sanitary sewer service arrived in the village and the lower Fox Valley area, every home had an outhouse crouched over a privy hole in their back or side yard. After indoor plumbing reached homes, outhouses were removed, the privy holes were filled in, and the matter was largely forgotten.
Majewski estimates that there should be four to five privy holes that were in use at varying times from the 1860s to the 1910s on each of the eight adjoining lots just west of South River Street on either side of Clinton Street in the village’s downtown.
Since many people tended to use privies as garbage receptacles, to the three diggers the holes represent potential repositories of artifacts from the village’s earliest years, just waiting to be found and excavated.
“You can find out a lot about people by going through their garbage and that’s what we’re doing,” Majewski said.
The lots were purchased by the village two years ago to provide a site for a new village hall. The homes and garages that stood on eight of the lots were demolished earlier this year. A tiny home at 209 Clinton Street, which village officials and an architect have determined dates to the 1840s and the village’s founding, will remain on its current site. It is slated for restoration for possible future use as a small local history museum.
Katie Hertel, an administrative intern for the village, said she suggested the village contact Majewski after recalling how a privy digger excavated privy holes in the yard of a home owned by her parents in Wisconsin about 12 years ago.
Noting the village’s continuing population and geographic growth, Hertel said she believes the artifacts found in the privy holes can provide current and future village residents a glimpse of what life was like in the village during its earliest years.
“The village is growing so quickly in so many different directions now, we need something like these artifacts to show us where we’ve been,” she said.
For Majewski and his colleagues—who are working at no charge to the village—excavating privy holes is both a hobby and a passion.
Majewski estimated that over the past 35 years he has been involved in digging up over 500 privy holes in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. Combined, he said he and his colleagues have over 100 years of experience in privy excavation.
Hertel has taken note of the diggers’ expertise and enthusiasm.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” she said. “They’ll see the neck of a bottle sticking out of the dirt and they know exactly what it is, its significance and importance.”
Majewski said Hertel has gotten caught up in the excitement when they’ve located artifacts.
Referring to Hertel, he said, “She’s experienced what happens when you pull something out of the ground that hasn’t seen the light of day in 150 years. The last time it saw the light of day was when a guy from the Civil War era tossed it down the (privy) hole. You just get an adrenaline rush from that. I know I do.”
But Majewski acknowledged that excavating a privy site can be a pain-staking and, at times, frustrating process, especially if no artifacts are found.
“But I just love it,” he said. “We go to all these towns like Montgomery and try to find out something that they didn’t know before. Like a local pharmacy bottle that they had no record of being in business or a dairy.”
He added “What we are trying to do here is to find something out about Montgomery that nobody knows.”
Bottles, pottery shards
among items found
As of this past weekend, they had located and dug up more than ten privy holes ranging in depth from about 16 inches to six feet with the average depth being about five feet.
From those holes have come numerous artifacts ranging from livestock bones and teeth, silverware, shards of china plates and ironstone pots, pieces of china dolls, a metal coffee pot and a wide assortment of colorful glass bottles that once held everything from whiskey to beer to ointments.
Majewski said some of the plate shards date to the 1830s and were likely brought to the village by early settlers from out east and then, eventually, thrown away when they broke.
Hertel has been collecting and storing the artifacts as they have been removed from the privy holes. She said they will be cleaned and many put on public display at the new village hall which is targeted for completion on the site in the spring of 2008.
Once the Settlers Cottage at 209 Clinton Street is fully restored, Hertel said the artifacts could be displayed in the former home.
Majewski said he and his colleagues remain hopeful of locating items unique to the village. To date, they have found one bottle marked “Montgomery Magnesia Spring Water Company.”
But Majewski noted that even digging through the privy sites, the village is overshadowed by the much larger, neighboring community to the north, Aurora.
“We’re trying to find a Montgomery pharmacy bottle, but so far all of the pharmacy bottles have been from Aurora, along with all the beer bottles,” he said.
Hertel noted the diggers did find a milk bottle marked “J.W. Lilley,” implying that it was from a Lilley Dairy.
“We don’t know the origin of the bottle, but there is a Lilley family buried in the cemetery (off South Broadway Avenue in the village),” Hertel said. “But we’re not sure if it was their dairy or an off-shoot of their family or a different family entirely.”
Hertel said she was moved when the pieces of one of the dolls were pulled from a privy site.
“A girl probably dropped that doll down the privy,” Hertel said. “She must have been in tears when that happened.”
Majewski speculated on another scenario that resulted in the doll being found in the privy hole.
“Maybe that girl’s brother threw it down the privy,” he said.
Majewski said the close proximity of the village to the Fox River may have served to limit the amount of artifacts that he and his colleagues are now recovering.
“When you have a river this close, people tended to use it as an open sewer,” he explained. “People would take their junk and just throw it in the river. If they had something they didn’t want to throw into the river, they put it, sometimes in pieces, in their privy.”
Digger: Privy sites
can tell home’s history
Majewski traced his own interest in privy digging to an early fascination with finding things.
“I used to dig in old garbage dumps that were in existence prior to the 1900s,” Majewski said. “But then I found out about privy diggers who were working out east.”
He added, “I think privy digging is more interesting because you can relate things you find in the privy to a specific house, whereas in a dump you don’t know who used what,” he said. “You can tell by what people threw into their privy things like whether they had children or were drinkers or smokers.”
Over the years, Majewski has learned to locate privy holes on home sites by examining early plat maps, and then probing likely sites by using a sharpened steel rod. He estimated that privies would be used for about eight to ten years depending upon their depth and how many people lived in the home. When a privy hole filled up, the old one would be covered over and the homeowner would have to dig a new one elsewhere in the yard.
In selecting a privy site, Majewski said homeowners had to make a decision whether they wanted the privy close to the home which would make it more convenient to use during cold winter nights or further away where it was less likely to be a source of foul odors, especially during the hot summer months.
“If you can find every privy on a home site you can put together a pretty good chronology of who lived in the house at what time,” he said.
“I hope the privy dig will inspire other people in the village to look through their attics to see if they have anything unique to Montgomery,” Hertel said. “Pictures, anything that has been in their families but may have no value to them but tell a store about Montgomery. We need those things to put in our museum.”
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
