More stuff I pulled out of the water #8

These little stone spheroids are thought to be old millstones - not the big round affairs with the square hole in the middle, but smaller stones. I'm not sure what they would have milled, but I found them downstream of an old mill site when I was a young lad. They came from a gravel bed in Duck Creek, near Smyrna, DE, and I found them when I was about 9 or 10 years old while poking around in the creek for crayfish. They are probably archeologically significant (in context), alas, in my youth I failed to understand the importance of such things.

More stuff I pulled out of the water #7

Actually, these came off the same beach as the lead buttons discussed previously. These are bits of brass, copper, or bronze nails - making them distinctly for nautical use. These were found in nearly the same spot as the lead buttons. Could they be from an old ship or boat wreck, or might they be coffin nails?

Put this in your pipe and smoke it...

These two items (above the penny) are the remnants of old clay smoking pipes of the kind used during colonial times. The bowls are small by today's standards, because tobacco was more expensive back then. Even earlier pipes had yet smaller bowls. These probably date to the mid to late 1700's, and were allegedly dug from a dirt-floored cellar in a house near Leipsic, Delaware. Just what any decent pirate would have smoked with!