I recently returned home to Connecticut from spending time along the Kentucky/Tennessee borderline for the Holidays. I thought you would enjoy seeing a dogtrot cabin, how I made my way to a fossil hunting area, a request for a fossil identification, and other interesting bits.
While there, I checked out my favorite dogtrot cabin. This cabin was built and is still owned by some of my mother’s distant relatives. It has sat empty for many years now but I remember visiting there while a young boy. It was last occupied by two bachelor brothers and their old maid sister. I use to beg my mother for us to go visit them and she also enjoyed going there. So we would bring cake to share and I loved it because it was a door into a world that time had forgotten. They used oil lamps and had no electricity or plumbing!
The young man who now owns it has refused to sell it to a university, a local doctor and other interested parties so it just sits. I suspect that maybe the owner is sentimental about it and is afraid that others would relocate it. I do not know him but I am going to contact one of my aunts who does and have her inquire about it. If he would offer to sale it to me, I would buy it in a heart beat to use as a retirement home, of course with updates, as the outhouse needs new towel racks. It sits on a nice old winding country road and around the corner is an early 1800s house which is the first brick house built in the county, also by one of my mother’s relatives.
This 1883 date is carved into one of the chimneys but I believe the cabin to be much older.
I always go fossil hunting while visiting the area. Below are my finds from this trip and I am asking help in identifying one of them further down. Please notice the three seashells toward the left.
First I thought you would like to see how I travel to the area. (Please don’t tell my rental car company!)
This is a 24 hour operating ferry and is free to all. I have a high school classmate who is one of the ferry operators.
As soon as the two cars above left, the ferry immediately returned to the other side with one car and there were already three waiting. The blue structure on the left contains beds for the ferry operators to sleep at night. You just blow your car horn and they will get up to bring you across.
moving right along comes my best part. You can really tell the water level is low because I am not sure I have previously seen parts of the bottom exposed. This section of the road is actually the creek bed that you drive through for a distance to get back on pavement.
this is the other end. It gets pretty deep at times. There use to be many roads like this but now I am aware of maybe five/six others remaining. Now you know where the saying “I’ll be there as long as the creek don’t rise” comes from. At times, it is impassable. I remember school days when several students would be absent because the county creeks were so high that the school buses couldn’t get through.
this lonely guy kept running along beside my car wanting to hang out and visit a bit
Below is one of my favorite places to fossil hunt. I walk very slowly along the creek bed as the water magnifies everything. The white structure in the background use to be a one room schoolhouse where my grandmother taught, it’s now a Church. I previously talked about my grandmother here. I usually go here only in colder weather as this is known as rattlesnake country, especially back over to the left. I have seen copperheads around the Church as I mostly walk along the creek back behind it in the woods. I always wear knee high boots and carry a big stick.
These are previous finds including turtle shells and broken arrowheads
No one here at DK could help with the object below. Even the archaeologists at work didn’t know what to make of it.
I find many geodes.
I even found this Good Luck charm below dated 1950. After some research, I found the stamped name on the charm is the man in the photograph. He was 24 when he made the lucky charm at the county fair or some other festival. He died unmarried at the age of 33. I have not yet been able to locate any of his family members. Only a very small flicker of something shiny in the creek bed sand caught my eye. It was meant for me to find the charm. He lived about twenty miles away so I keep wondering how the charm ended up in its final resting spot.
DK members helped me identify what we had always called “penny stacks” as being actual parts of animals named “crinoids ”. I had always thought they were parts of some plant but are not. Parts of the columnal are what you see in most of my photographs. The part of a rare aboral cup find with arm sections is shown above with the lucky charm.
and DK members also identified this tooth below as belonging to a wild boar and had probably been his lower right tusk.
I have glass jars filled with just the croniods that I treasure.
Here are a few
I keep these two jars in my built-in dining room china cabinet. As you can see I am really not one to collect china
a few other interesting finds in the cabinet
I’ve got your crinoids right here!
you can see a few seashells on the above right and the below right on the oblong rock.
This rock contains a bit of everything.
I found the below rock last week. It’s probably a seashell but it would be the largest one that I have ever seen from this area. But then again I am wondering though if it might be some type of hoof? The smooth bottom, the different layers of possibly a small animals foot? What do you think?
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also found that day next to the creek was a Lincoln (he was born in Kentucky!). In the creek were a porcelain doll’s arm and the bottom of a flat iron (I will pretend that it is my great grandmother’s who once lived close by). You can imagine the fun I have getting through TSA at the airports with all this and why the agents usually call their managers over.
So that’s it for my fossil hunting. On the way back to town there’s also an interesting community I go through and of course the way there is also interesting
Cattle and tobacco are the main economy
the post office has been closed for many years (this would be great to live in)
lots of older interesting houses. I would love to have a second floor porch
and if the dogtrot cabin doesn’t fan out, there are several other houses in the area in need of some loving care. I believe the second story porch floor might need to be jacked back up.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed this small day trip close to “My Old Kentucky Home”. Keep your fingers crossed that one day I get the dogtrot cabin, especially if the creek don’t rise.