Hidden in the wall.....

[Ghosttown]

So three weeks ago, after much convincing by my wife, we started tearing apart the bathroom / bedroom of our almost 100 year old home to remodel. Being that this house was built in 1917, I have always had the thought that someday I hope I find something hidden in the wall, specifically a letter (I have seen way too many movies). Well as anyone who has done it before can tell you, tearing out plaster and lathe board is a messy process. After getting the majority of it torn down, while cleaning up I came across several neat old "Perkins push button light switch boxes"; pretty state of the art back then. There were also some switch plate boxes that have been hiding in there since the house was built also, but they were in pretty rough shape. Well as you can imagine, I was pretty excited just finding those, almost like opening a time capsule. As I dug around a bit more I came across something even better. Sure enough, sitting in the wall for almost 100 years now, was a letter from Bantry, Ireland dated September 1917. It is literally everything I have ever hoped to find. The letter was addressed to a man by the name of "Con Shea" from what I would guess to be his sister back home in Ireland. From the digging I have done, I believe his name to have been "Cornelius O'Shea" and that he was an Irish immigrant who made his way here to the West to be a Sheepherder. As long as my research has been focused on the correct family it seems as though they had some history around here. Pretty neat find if I do say so myself!
Has anybody else ever come across something like this?

 

[dakine_surf]

That is downright cool!!! Man I like that kinda stuff, I think that would be really cool to try and track down anyone in the family and see if they know anything about the woman who the letter is addressed to.


I remember when my family remodeled one of our homes back in the early 90's they tore down the then almost 85year old wall to find olnd newspapers stuffed in for insulation. Most of it was unreadable from what i remember, but i believe date was found on one that was in decent shape sometime around 1908.

 

[Ghosttown]

I remember when my family remodeled one of our homes back in the early 90's they tore down the then almost 85year old wall to find olnd newspapers stuffed in for insulation. Most of it was unreadable from what i remember, but i believe date was found on one that was in decent shape sometime around 1908.

Honestly that is all I thought I would find. I would have been pretty happy with that! I need to do some more digging, but from what I have found it appears as though both Con and his wife (Mary) passed away in the 20's. After that their kids went to foster homes apparently. Hopefully it doesn't end there, there has got to be some people around who are relations of some type.

 

[dakine_surf]

Yeah that would be really cool if you could track down the kids or even their kids... I bet they would love a little more family history!

 

[tWistedWheelz]

Very cool for sure! I have worked on tons of old houses and churches built pre 1900 and most pre civil war (antebellum), but I have never found anything that cool! We did find some porcelain figurines once, but gave them to the lady that owned the house. I always hoped to find a real niche of history though!

 

[swan]

I love this kind of thing.


When I remodeled my duplex from 1888 I found and old cigar box stashed in the attic with cutout newsprint adverts of corsets and woman's undergarments. Someone's early porn stash!


www.foundmagazine.com has some amazing finds.

 

[Ghosttown]

I love this kind of thing.


When I remodeled my duplex from 1888 I found and old cigar box stashed in the attic with cutout newsprint adverts of corsets and woman's undergarments. Someone's early porn stash!


www.foundmagazine.com has some amazing finds.

Ha! That is awesome! +1 on Found magazine. That one has been a favorite of mine for quite a while too!

 

[redlinedave]

While doing my house all i found was some old change
35 cents...a 1930's quarter and dime.... some guys wage for the day

 

[Tim]

I've pulled 1930's newspapers out of my walls, and a pair of underwear someone shoved in a hole to seal a draft.

Make sure you put something back IN the wall before you seal it back up!

 

[paztrick]

What a great find. Actually a couple years ago we did some renovations to an old house built in 1930 and came across a mouse chewed love letter that had fallen down into a wall in an attic space. The recipient Mary Jean, was probably hiding the letter from her parents and forgot about it.

 

[Ghosttown]

What a great find. Actually a couple years ago we did some renovations to an old house built in 1930 and came across a mouse chewed love letter that had fallen down into a wall in an attic space. The recipient Mary Jean, was probably hiding the letter from her parents and forgot about it.

Right on man, that is a nice find! I always knew that Curly was up to no good....

 

[lockard666]

when i was rewiring my old house, the basement stairwell had old masonite instead of plaster on the walls... so i just decided to tear it off of the side that was the back of the living room wall so i could run surround sound stuff, coax, receptacles, etc... when i tore it off, there was an all wooden ouija board inside the wall that had been there for a LONG time... there was no planchette with it... it was very well used as the clear coat was very worn in the center... there was a black cat off to one side & a swastika(pre ww2) off to the other side & a checkerboard on the back... i researched it a bit & if my memory serves me correctly, it was from the mid 20's from a company called J.M. Simmons... i cleaned the coal dirt off of it & had it in my living room for years as a conversation piece... eventually, i sold it on ebay for $90... i always wondered what the chain of events was that landed that thing inside that wall.

 

[lockard666]

Make sure you put something back IN the wall before you seal it back up!

great idea man!

 

[boingk]

Yeah definitely put something back in, maybe even include a few photos of a car or bike something... give 'em something to wonder over when everythings gone electric haha.

BTW, Lockard? Crazy find on that Ouija board... bet that would've made your day!

Cheers - boingk

 

[Hoofhearted]

When I was about ten years old my Dad bought an old house. He wanted to put a patio in and I helped him dig it out for the concrete pour. I found this buried about 3-4 inches down in the dirt. an old cast iron toy. A C cab stakebed, chain driven. Crude but cool.

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[boingk]

Cool for sure. Gotta remember to use the 'Macro' setting on your camera though, it'll help a lot for closeup shots like that one.

Cheers - boingk

 

[Hoofhearted]

Cool for sure. Gotta remember to use the 'Macro' setting on your camera though, it'll help a lot for closeup shots like that one.

Cheers - boingk


Point and click is the max for me when it comes to photos. You have to remember I'm only half a step ahead of a Brownie Box camera!!

 

[Le55ons]

In a friend of mines house we found a stuffed german shepherd (the dog, not an actual german sheepherder lol) when tearing up the floor in the attic.
No telling how long it had been lying there, but it sure looked old.

Not as cool as finding letters and stuff, but quite a shock when we tore up the floor and found a dead dog staring at us ???


Guess they were running low on insulation sometime way back and figured the beloved family pet would do just fine after a trip to the taxidermist..

 

[lockard666]

BTW, Lockard? Crazy find on that Ouija board... bet that would've made your day!

Cheers - boingk

well, i slept with one eye open for a bit, i'll tell you that... it was kinda creepy.

 

[t71ford]

I love this kind of thing too. I have been rummaging around our house a lot doing work to it. Found an old tobacco case, coffee and tea tins, and a packing crate with the labels intact from the then local dry goods store. Since the house was built in 1890, I researched the house through the court house and tax offices, and have gotten almost a complete geneaology of the house from the first builders till now. I even found most of the obituaries for those people as well! Pretty cool stuff, since a lot of their descendants still live around here. oh, and +1 on putting something of your own in the wall!