When I was a young child growing up in Concord many decades ago, I would meet with my friends and venture into the surrounding forest in search of the past. We would bring shovels and an abundance of ambition as we would dig for ancient bottles and search for all things old.
When I was 12 years old, I started my very first job as a paperboy delivering the Monitor each afternoon after school. I had three objectives as a 12-year-old paperboy; quality service to my customers, to purchase a black Schwinn Stingray bicycle and to buy a metal detector. I was fortunate to achieve all three objectives my very first year and my career as a newspaper boy continued into my teen years.
Purchasing a metal detector placed me in high esteem with my fellow bottle diggers. Yes, I was certainly eager to visit the local parks and find the lost coins hidden just below the surface. This satisfied me for a short period of time, but I had a quest to discover really old relics.
I spoke to my parents and listened to interesting stories about the past. I spoke to my maternal grandparents and even learned some more. With my newly acquired information, I set out early one Saturday morning to visit some locations that might provide a close link to the past. With research I identified a location in Concord that was once used to train soldiers well over a century before, and this was my destination. By the end of my first day with my new metal detector, I had discovered some really old coins and a Brown Bess Socket Bayonet.
As I walked home proudly with my old bayonet, I visited the library to identify my treasured find. The Brown Bess Socket Bayonet I held was a standard issue to the British infantry and was issued between the years 1722 and 1840. It was made for use with the Brown Bess musket and would easily fit over the barrel. My discovery fueled much ambition, as a 12-year-old I ventured next door to my retired neighbor with my bayonet and spoke about the past. It was at this tender age that the seeds of history were planted and my life long passion blossomed in the following years.
My neighbor sat with me and told me about his very own youthful days growing up in Concord. He was born in the year 1882 and spent his entire life here. We were similar in many ways and he spoke of his early treasure hunts too. His father was a mason and worked on the construction of the third Concord Train Depot on the present-day Storrs Street, so the story did go. As the Saturday afternoon sun was setting and the ice cubes in my tea melted, I listened as he spoke of his own adventures as a child growing up in Concord. This was the day that I learned about a discovery that I remember to this very day.
My old friend spoke about his father and the work he conducted at the train depot. He said there were two depots on the same location prior to the new one that was constructed in 1870. A crew of stone masons busied themselves with hand-digging in the soil on the west side of the Merrimack River. As the excavation was nearing completion the granite slabs from Rattlesnake Hill were delivered in a wagon pulled by oxen. My old friends’ father was working alongside a gentleman named Lyman Fellows, another mason on the crew hired to install the granite foundation for the most majestic train depot in the northeast. As the day concluded, there came shouts from Lyman Fellows, alarming many of the men gathered to investigate the concern. Lyman did not cry out in pain. He shouted in excitement for he had just made a discovery deep beneath the soil. As the other masons continued to circle Lyman, he emerged from the trench with an object in his hands, an object unknown and untouched for centuries. On this day in 1870, Lyman Fellows held an ancient Iberian short iron sword blade. He held a sacred piece of our past. The wooden hilt was long decayed but there was an inscription on the blade of the short sword that was translated by historian Barry Fell. The blade was engraved with the words “Hand wrought death dealing steel to cut through armor.”
As the Saturday afternoon sun set behind Rattlesnake Hill, I said my good evening to my old friend and thanked him for telling me the story about his father and the sword. I went home that evening, looked at my British Brown Bess Socket Bayonet on my dresser. I dreamed of history that evening and about what is and what used to be. I dreamed about all that is still buried beneath our feet and about future discoveries.
My old friend might have died but his stories still live within me. All these years later, I still have my very first metal detector, my Brown Bess Socket Bayonet and the stories of my youth.