Combined what got me involved & what i enjoy

How about what got me into it and what keeps me in it.

I grew up in a small town so there weren't many people detecting. I would see a guy in the fields at the intersection of Concord Road and Kingston Pike and wondered exactly what it was that he was doing. My grandmother use to tell me stories about the area and that her family had been there for too many generations to count. "That house was a hospital during the civil war and there was still blood stains on the wall when I was your age" she would say."That one was also and it was the main stop here at Campbell's Station" Well it wasn't long till I found out that man in the field was digging relics from the Battle of Campbell's Station. The area has since become the city of Farragut and has a nice little museum full of the pieces he recovered. Unfortunately, I never got to know him and the area is now off limits to hunters.

All of this did put two and two together for me and I had been bitten by the bug. I am constantly looking for someone to give me permission to do small scale excavations so that I may learn more about this fast growing area before it is all covered by shopping malls.
There was also a stage coach stop a couple of miles from my house back in the day. The owner died and was buried there. Last year the property sold and his body was exhumed and moved. I believe the land will be developed soon and I am trying desperately to get permission to detect so that any artifacts there don't get lost forever.
Like most of you I don't sell my finds but use them as clues to paint a picture of the area "back in the day". The coolest and most mysterious thing so far has been a thin silver young girls ring that I pulled from my Grandfather's yard. None of my aunts or uncles could identify it. I am assuming it came from a couple of generations back since this land has been in the family for well over 150 years. My daughter fell in love with it so I had it cleaned and straightened and gave to her explaining it's history as I knew it. She is 18 now and still cherishes it knowing it came from an ancestor she will never meet. She wore it to graduation and plans to wear it to her wedding. It's a cheap piece monetarily but priceless to her.
My home is being taken over by urban sprawl and when it's all said and done the town I knew, loved and grew to manhood in and it's memories will be lost forever. Memories of good, honest Country folk that took care of each other and lived by their word and whose stories and the stories of those who came before them made me into the man I am today. I want my kids and their kids and their kids etc. to know these things as well.
I don't just dig, I spend time getting to know the landowner and their story. At times this is far more valuable than anything I might pull out of the ground.

Okay so I know this is pretty sappy but it's the truth and those stories I spoke of are told by survivors of the great depression. People who lived without running water and indoor plumbing and conditioned air and grocery stores. Veterans of many wars and their children.
One piece of land I hunt was bought by one of the great grandfathers of the current owner from Grant himself and it's still in the family. The first post office in this area still stands on his place. I haven't dug it yet but I'm chomping at the bit.

The people who are moving into their fine subdivision homes in these areas often don't know or don't care about this history. Trying to preserve that memory of a time past, my family's time is what keeps me out there digging rain or shine.

As always, sorry for rambling but when I read the what got you into detecting and the what part of detecting do you enjoy posts they really got me thinking and this post is what came out of it. I would be really interested in hearing from anyone that detects similarly or may even be close by and would want to combine notes.

HH
Chris

Your lucky as you have the history all around you and I have to travel to the boonies for old fairgrounds parks, swimming holes etc. With two large detecting clubs plus the area becoming asphalt city really a challenge and good luck getting permission. Man if those guys in the late 70-80's had todays equipment really wouldn't be much left but the hobby has evolved into deeper lighter units and the thrill of the hunt still is here although getting tougher every year...

Wow, when my grandparents where alive they lived on the corner of Land Oak Lane and Kingston Pike in Concord Tennessee. I was in Farragut a while back to attend my Uncle John's funeral (my father's brother). I didn't realize that there was that much CW history in that area. I live on the other side of the state in Savannah TN. Visiting East Tennessee was like going to another country when I was a little boy. Then, Interstate 40 stopped before ya got to Knoxville. What memories your post inspired.

Kevin, I live just a few miles from your Grandparent's house. If you have been here recently then you know exactly what I mean when I talk about how fast the area is growing. At one time what is now Farragut was part of Concord. Concord is the original settlement in this area. As more and more money moved in, folks decided the area should be a city and little by little Concord is being forgotten.
When I was a kid we didn't even use our street name much less house numbers when giving someone our address, it was simply Route 32 Concord, TN. Back then there were just a few houses on my street, and our phone was on a party line with two of them. Now there are six subdivisions on the street and more being built.
The small original community of Old Concord still exists down by the lake but the addresses are all Farragut or Knoxville now.
Anyway, you can google "The Battle of Campbell's Station" and read up on it. There were several forts in and around Knoxville but most of them have been asphalted or subdivided now so anything that might remain of them is lost to us, at least until someone decides to level Knoxville and return it to farm land.

There's quite a bit of stuff all around there though. A bunch of my buddies and I have started digging some decent relics up near Loudon, Tn. They camped all in and around Strawberry Plains, Tn. From Strawberry Plains to Kingston, and over to Tellico and back down my way....relics are all around and plenty of farm land to hunt. It is being crept in by subdivisions and concrete but still plenty of places to hunt. It's just getting out there and finding it.

I used BING maps a while back to look down on Land Oak Lane in "bird's eye mode" and see that my granddaddy and granny's house was torn down and a medical plaza or some kind of plaza is standing there now. Oh what memories of visiting my daddy's parents there in the fall when the UT Vols were having a game. Of course, we'd visit at other times too. Mee Maw and Pee Paw, and their sons (my daddy and uncle) lived in Cambell and Scott counties for years. Elk Valley, Jellico, Capuchin, was where the Blankenships hailed from, or at least my lineage of the Blankenship clan. I would LOVE to go to my daddy's old homeplace and metal detect all around it merely to possibly find evidence of his childhood. Old toys, pennies, and whatnot. We still own the old homeplace and several acres along with Uncle John's (daddy's brother) children. Oh that daddy was still here (he died in 1999) to tell his old childhood stories of being raised in the mountains. We have visited up there to clear off old gravesites when I was a young un. My first cousins have been up there recently and said that the whole area has been taken over by meth heads and meth makers and the crime that follows such as that.
But back to Concord. Daddy would always get us out of school at lunch, or even mid-morning sometimes, to go to East Tennessee (that's what he always called it when we were going to Concord to visit Mee Maw and Pee Paw. She would cook fried minute steak and gravy, new potatoes mixed with green beans, maters, okree, all out of their big old garden. Granddaddy was a beekeeper too and he knew that I LOVED honey and would send me home with a big mason jar of his honey. WITH THE COMB still in it, like I liked it!!! Good heavens...if I keep typing I'm gonna get teary eyed and we men ain't s'posed to do that. lol

Kevin, some of my people came from Campbell and Scott Counties as well. I am working on some new sites now. You should make the trip back and my brother and I will give you the 50 cent tour showing you where some of the OLD stuff is. We may even be able to get in a little detecting. The offer is open whenever you have time just let me know.
Somewhere buried deep in the dark recesses of my MAC are aerial photos taken while the interstate was first beginning. I will email them to you when I find them.
Let me know if you want to come up this way to hunt.
Chris