THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603030182
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
It was said to be a pristine Civil War hunting ground.
And the prospect of working undug, unhunted land in the heart of Virginia's war country brought two-time Daytona 500 champion Sterling Marlin to the Old Dominion a bit earlier than usual Thursday.
Marlin, an enthusiastic Civil War relic hunter, enjoys the NASCAR race weekends at Richmond International Raceway because they give him a chance to hunt the Richmond-area battlefields with a metal detector.
In the past few years, Marlin has found almost 100 wartime bullets, known as minie balls, on farmland between Mechanicsville and Cold Harbor, both scenes of heavy fighting during the war.
The host for this day was Ray Grubbs of Chester, an excavator and relic hunter extraordinaire who owns a chunk of the Bermuda Hundred on the James River known as Trent's Reach.
``The armies was in here for 14 months, firing back and forth, so there's still a pile of stuff in the ground here,'' Grubbs said.
Grubbs has been hunting for more than 30 years, and he has a hundred stories. He excavated the site of the old Confederate commissary in downtown Richmond eight or 10 years ago and found more than 5,000 buttons.
He and others found the remains of a Union ship that had blown up in the James near his property and recovered more than 100 muskets.
Once, he found a complete saber buried to its hilt in the mud along the riverbank.
But those were the good old days. There are so many relic hunters now, and so little unhunted land, that it's a challenge to find good hunting grounds.
Marlin has been hunting for about five years. His best find, made on the bloody battleground of Franklin, Tenn., near his home, is the top of a battle flagstaff, with the spread wings of an eagle. Mostly, Marlin finds minie balls. He estimates he's found about 500.
The site for the day's hunt was a tract of woodland along the James between Hopewell and Chester. Troops from Pennsylvania camped on this land for many months in 1864 and 1865. And as every relic hunter knows, soldiers dropped things where they camped.
``We searched here last year,'' Grubbs said, ``and we found a whole pile of stuff - shovels, a pick and two bugles.''
``Well, let's go!'' said Marlin.
Marlin brought an extra metal detector, so in the space of a minute I'm in business, too. We march into the woods, spread out and begin to hunt.
I've been a Civil War collector most of my life, but I have almost no experience with relic hunting.
The first thing you discover is that when you place yourself under the earphones of a metal detector, it's something like spending the afternoon listening to the Emergency Broadcast System tone.
With the metal detector I was using, you hear a constant, droning tone. And as you sweep the ground plate of the detector over the ground, you listen for that tone to change. If the tone changes, you've got a hit.
But it wasn't that simple. I kept getting ``hits,'' only to lose the signal altogether when I tried to pinpoint the spot. So I struggled along, dodging tree limbs and briars.
Suddenly, I got a huge hit. And there it was, right on the surface, hidden in the leaves. It was a hubcap. A Ford hubcap at least 70 years old.
Not bad, except Marlin drives a Chevy.
A few moments later, one of Grubbs' friends, Bruce Dean, called to me and Winston Cup Illustrated photographer LaDon George.
``That's a good signal right there,'' he said, pointing to a spot on the ground. George and I both swept our detectors over the spot. Both of us got ``hits.''
``See what it is,'' said Dean, walking away. ``I'll die if it's a Confederate button.''
So we start digging. We found nothing. Both of us ran our detectors over the small pile of dirt and the hole. We couldn't even get a signal anymore. We covered up the hole.
Dean returned. ``Did y'all get that?'' he asked.
``We can't find the signal anymore,'' I said.
So Dean ran his metal detector over the spot, slammed his entrenching tool into the ground, pulled up a hunk of earth, sifted it through his fingers and produced, if by magic, a small-caliber cartridge bullet from the Civil War.
``It's just real hard ground to read anything in,'' Dean said. ``It doesn't matter what kind of detector you have.''
Marlin, meanwhile, was not having any luck either.
``Found a few shotgun hulls is all,'' he says. ``Lot of pretty big holes over yonder.''
He was right. The woods were dotted with the telltale holes of other hunters.
The land was no longer pristine. It had been hunted. But it was far from a dry hole. This became obvious when we came upon Grubbs.
In about 90 minutes of hunting, using an old machine that looked as if were held together with baling wire and tape, he had found six minie balls, a Union eagle button, a crushed match container, a rusted hammer head and several other chunks of metal. And Dean had found three buttons.
But Marlin was ready to go to Mechanicsville, where George's uncle owns a farm on battlefield land. Marlin was certain he would find something there.
And on Friday morning at Richmond International Raceway, on the verge of the first Winston Cup practice, Marlin stuck his gloved hand out of the window of his Chevy and motioned me over.
At dusk in Mechanicsville, he had hit paydirt.
``Found five bullets and a piece of brass. Something off a uniform, I think,'' he said.
``We probably didn't hunt but for about 15 minutes. Musta been a hell of a fight there.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
BOB ZELLER
Sterling Marlin has been scouring battlegrounds for about five
years. He estimates he has found 500 minie balls - Civil War-era
bullets.
by CNB