Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1910 — DUG UP RUSTY SHOTGUN [ARTICLE]

DUG UP RUSTY SHOTGUN

r» Well Diggers In Gifford District Unearth An Old BreechLoader. While putting down a well at Ed Oliver’s near Newland a few days ago, J, W. Ward and Frank Phillips run onto the barrels of a doublei-barreled breech-loading shotgun buried about four feet under ground. The wood stock was completely gone and perhaps eight or ten inches of the smaller end of the barrels were eaten away by rust. Whether the luckless hunter lost the weapon while hunting on the march several years ago and went down in the mupk with the gun is of course unknown, as the soil that ate the steef barrels

of the gun so badly would likely have also destroyed any vestige of’ a man if buried there at the same time. The weapon could not have been buried there such a great number of years, as breech loaders, of this .pattern -at least, have not been in existence, probably more than thirty-five or forty years, but there is some substance in the muck ground that eats up wood and steel comparitively quick, and the part found bears the earmarks of a century or more’s burial such as would be the result in ordinary soil. The gun is at The Democrat office for a few days where it may be seen by the curious.