The Columbia County Municipal Historians, of which there are 22 (there should be 23, but the Chatham slot is currently empty), meet quarterly to talk about local history and share information. These meetings are usually brisk and business-like, although occasionally we’ll hear something sensational, like the time Kinderhook preservationists broke into a condemned building they believed was historically significant and discovered a dead body, then argued for 30 minutes about whether to call the police because, technically, they were trespassing. That’s a Netflix limited series, right there.
Equally riveting was a November 2023 presentation by Max Cane, a Canaan, NY-based historian and “detectorist,” the term used in the UK to describe someone who uses a portable metal detector as a hobby. But Max, who has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a master’s in geology from RPI, is no mere hobbyist. He’s more like an archeologist, scanning topography to locate abandoned foundations, walls, and roads that dotted the landscape during colonial times. Once he’s zeroed in on a promising target and receives permission from the property owners, he uses his metal detector to unearth objects that can date back centuries.
Max loves old foundations. “Property owners often don’t know about abandoned foundations on their own land, because they’ve been camouflaged under tree canopies and centuries of overgrowth,” Max told us. Using images and data from LIDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging), an aerial mapping technique available through the Unites States Geological Service that produces 3D topographical maps, Max can detect visible depressions on the land that indicate where an old structure may once have stood.
Max compares these LIDAR images with old town maps, where dwellings are often labeled with the owner’s names. If the structure is gone but the LIDAR map shows a depression, there’s a good chance it’s a foundation that’s ripe for investigation. Max has spent up to two years tracking down far-flung property owners for permission to detect on their land.
1853 Hillsdale Map vs. 2023 Lidar image
As seen on his Instagram account @fieldguidetohistory, the results are worth it. Max (gently) cleans each item, researches its history, and posts photos and narrative descriptions about the relic. With nearly 53,000 followers from around the world, he’s one of the most knowledgeable and popular detectorists on the platform. And after cataloging the finds he will, with the owners’ permission, store them in a Canaan facility he has built to preserve these fragile relics. Max doesn’t sell his finds: he makes a distinction between what he does (historical research) and “treasure hunting.” His goal is to create a regional museum of found artifacts, and he’s writing a book about his finds in the Berkshires.
Once we got a glimpse of what Max could do, we asked him to help us identify the location of Hillsdale’s first Methodist church, a rough-hewn frame building that had been erected on land donated by Parla Foster in 1811. Early maps showed it at the corner of what is today Pill Hill and Route 22, behind a schoolhouse which is long gone, as is the church building. There was no foundation, but there is an old graveyard that had been attached to the church. Our detecting date was a chilly, drizzly Sunday in December. Max arrived wearing only a sweatshirt and cargo pants, seemingly impervious to the cold, while we were bundled in Polartec. He began scanning the half acre in a careful grid, listening through headphones to the “pings” his XP Deus detector emitted. Max, who is in his mid-30s, told us he has been seriously detecting for only eight years; his day job is CEO of an e-waste company. We were amazed at his acuity in distinguishing the detector’s tonal variations: he could tell almost immediately if an object six inches under the surface was iron, pewter, silver, or brass.
“The frost heaves in the Northeast mean that artifacts lost centuries ago are constantly coming back to the surface,” Max said as he began detecting. After about an hour, we heard him say, softly, “No way!” He held up a clod of clay soil and with a few quick swipes of his fingers, revealed it to be a Georgian Era (1780-1800) pocket watch winder of gilded brass with a paste center stone.
Pocket Watch Winder emerging from the soil, and after Max gave it a glow-up with a little lemon juice and water.
Watches and clocks were scarce in early America; most people relied on the sun to tell time. “This was probably made in England,” said Max. “Imagine you lived in Hillsdale around 1800. It was not an affluent area. The one time people would bring out their best clothing and finery was when they went to church. This winder would have been attached to the chain of someone’s pocket watch. It was an expensive item, something someone would be proud to wear on a special occasion.”
We’ll never know who the pocket watch winder belonged to, but it made sense to us that the location of the find matched what would have been the location of the early church, based on early maps. Max unearthed a few buttons that were contemporaneous with the period, and several 19th century coins. “The best way to date a site is by finding buttons and coins,” he said. “Aside from the dates on the coins, buttons styles went in and out of fashion and you can get a good read on the time period by researching the style.” For a deeper dive on buttons styles through the centuries, click here.
Next, we went to a house in the hamlet that had been built by Dr. Horace Westlake in 1865. Even if we didn’t already know it had been a physician’s home, the relics Max found would have given us a pretty good hint. Out of the ground came a partially intact pocket watch that Max showed us had a special feature for monitoring heart rate. There was an enormous pewter syringe that surely must have terrified Dr. Westlake’s patients, a beautifully preserved Victorian bicycle bell, some sleigh bells, pieces of several harmonicas (the most popular musical instrument of the time – everyone had one), and a watch fob from the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris.
On the left, Dr. Westlake’s fearsome-looking syringe. On the right, sleigh bells that still ring!
This watch fob was given as a prize to a New York City clothing manufacturer named N.J. Schloss & Co. at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France. The Universal Exposition was a world’s fair held in Paris to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. The Exposition’s most famous structure, the Eiffel Tower, was built as the centerpiece of the fair. This is one of the first-ever pieces to show the Eiffel Tower.
As if that wasn’t enough, Max unearthed a find he called “EPIC” on his Instagram feed: a largely intact 1870s spur trigger pistol small enough to fit in someone’s boot. Although most cities forbade the open carrying of weapons, late 19th Century America was a time and place where almost everyone owned a gun, and many carried them concealed. The average person couldn’t necessarily afford a Remington, Colt, or Smith & Wesson, so there was a thriving market for cheap pistols. These guns held only one or two rounds, were inexpensively made, and while popular were not very accurate, which may be how they got the nickname “suicide specials.” Max was able to read the serial number stamped on the gun butt and traced it to Connecticut’s Whitneyville Armory, which produced this type of pistol from 1871-1876.
1870s Spur Trigger Pistol
At another Hillsdale location, this beauty was unearthed:
Victorian Era Chain Mail Mesh Purse. These purses were very popular in Victorian times and even into the 20th century. The fanciest ones were solid silver or gold, but others were base metal with silver or gold plating. This one looks to be German silver with silver plating. Probably late 1800s or early 1900s given the style. It was found in the foundation of a house that had burned down, and it’s held together remarkable well in the ground — even the hanging chain is intact. There’s an area of possible fire damage on one side of the clasp and quite a few of the nearby relics show heat damage so this was likely in the house when it burned.
We follow Max’s Instagram account to stay up to date on the wonderful finds he’s unearthed in the region. Captions below are from Max’s Instagram page @fieldguidetohistory, and lightly edited:
Silver Tudor Rose Cufflinks. Intact sets of colonial silver cufflinks are very rare finds in the US. These would have been quite expensive in the 1760s and likely a real status piece. From the town’s history Max knew that this spot had been settled by a wealthy family from Connecticut, and these cufflinks likely belonged to the patriarch of that particular family.
Boyd’s Battery was a quack healing device from the 1870s that was supposed to heal the body through “soft and gentle” galvanic action. It was meant to be worn next to the skin as a pendant and the little discs are all different metals so the slight current produced would then be transferred to the body. As with most “cures” in those days, ads for the device claimed it would heal pretty much anything including asthma, deafness, gout, chills, fainting spells, and of course, erectile dysfunction.
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“Dandy” buttons. Dandy buttons were worn by fashionable gentlemen on their overcoats in the late 1700s. They were treated more like jewelry than as a part of a garment, and would be removed and swapped out for different sets much like cufflinks. These must have been head-turners 250 years ago!
1600s Indian Trade Ring. These rings were made in Europe and brought over by the very early European settlers of America. They were specifically made to trade with the Native Americans and while some were given as goodwill gifts or for food, the vast majority were traded for pelts. The pelts were then shipped back to Europe as one of the principal means to fund these new settlements. Based on where Max found this ring, he was able to track down the specific merchant who traded with the Natives in the region. The merchant’s trade manifesto still exists in a museum and the record suggests he brought these rings with him in the 1660s. The ring itself is very simple in design as they were mass produced for this purpose. The frame is cast brass and the stones are colored paste glass with some rudimentary faceting.
War of 1812 Artillery Officer’s Belt Plate. The style is known as the “star of stars” pattern and the plate was found next to an old foundation deep in the woods. As there were fewer artillery than infantry regiments, there were fewer plates manufactured, making this quite rare.
A Gold Victorian Brooch in Etruscan Revival Style.The center is an almandine garnet cabochon. The Etruscan methods of jewelry making were rediscovered in the late 1800s and this style became extremely fashionable. It was found at the edge of a foundation outside of Pittsfield.
A handful of coppers! From top: a 1798 draped bust large cent; a Connecticut Copper overstruck on a Nova Constellation coin, which were the first coins struck under the authority of the USA in 1783; a very worn William III halfpenny; an 1811 classic head large cent, and the reverse of an 1817 Matron Head large cent.
The journalist Ralph Gardner, Jr., profiled Max for WAMC when the intrepid detectorist knocked on his door asking to look at an abandoned foundation on Gardner’s property. “Nothing makes history come alive like digging it up, brushing it off, and clutching it in your hand,” Gardner wrote.
We couldn’t agree more. We’ve accompanied Max on a few detecting investigations, and we admire his patience and persistence: sometimes the searches don’t yield very much, although even the broken-off bowl of a spoon or a shoe buckle can provide the clues he needs to date a site. Then there are the poignant finds: the lost high school class rings, a child’s toy, or thimbles dropped from apron pockets when women sewed outside because the light was better. There’s a lot of history under our feet in Hillsdale. The age of Max’s findings at some sites in North Hillsdale suggest a pre-Revolutionary War settlement that may be the original Nobletown. At one abandoned foundation Max found Georgian-era shoe buckles, clothing buttons, and colonial copper coins dating back to the 1770s.
Max doesn’t charge for detecting and he’s always on the lookout for old foundations from 18th and 19th century home sites, as well as still-standing historic homes to investigate. If you have one, or know of one, he can be reached at paleomaxx@yahoo.com.
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© 2024 Chris Atkins and Lauren Letellier
The Historians of Hillsdale, New York 