What Once Was Lost: Purcellville Woman Digs Up the Past

Reporter

Barbara Cockerill sits in the remnants of a stone building in her backyard. She cleared the building of trash and then found hundreds of items that belonged to people from 1720 to modern days.

From buttons dating back to the mid 1700s, to ammunition like Minie balls and a cannon ball used during the Civil War, to Spanish pistareens and reals, Barbara Cockerill has dug it up on her family’s 151-year old farm in Purcellville.

The Cockerill’s bought the property on Snickersville Turnpike from the Ewer family in 1872 and have owned it and added more acreage to it since.

The amateur archeologist and her husband raised their five children on the property. She began using a metal detector to find things 14 years ago after she bought one for her teenage son.

“I wanted a metal detector but I couldn’t justify getting it for myself, so I got it for my son Andrew and we went out,” she said. “He did it with me for a while, but it was more of a passion for me.”

Cockerill said she learned a love of history and archeology from her father.

Some of Purcellville resident and amateur archeologist Barbara Cockerill’s finds as she has dug through the ground on her family’s farm. Pictured here marbles, a student’s writing slate and led pencil, bits of pottery and thimbles.

“My dad was an archeologist and I always liked digging up rocks and all that kind of stuff. I don’t know what age I was, but I used to hunt for fossils when I lived in Puerto Rico,” she said.

At first, she found a lot of shotgun shells, but it didn’t take long for her to find something interesting because, to her, most of what she finds is a piece of history.

Cockerill said you begin to recognize different tones when you use the metal detector and can tell if it’s something big—although often those big items are old beer cans.

“Beer cans and pop tops sound so good,” she said.

Through her years of digging and clearing out old trash where buildings used to be she has found shoe buckles from the 1700s, a Civil War spur, lots of silverware, locks and keys, sleigh bells and more. She estimates the timeframe of what she has dug up to be between 1720 to now—just over 300 years of history.

Cockerill has found hundreds of old coins, including Spanish reals that date back to 1781 and her oldest coin, a King George II that dates to between 1720-1740. She found that coin close to her mailbox right near Snickersville Turnpike. She noted the road has been there for centuries and was traveled by George Washington on his way from Alexandria to Winchester. She said it was well documented that Washington stayed at Bacon Fort, which was on their property, because it was a midpoint in his travels.

Some of the many coins and buttons Barbara Cockerill has found over the years on her property. Many of the buttons are from the Civil War and the coins are Spanish silver.

She said people used to drill holes in coins and sew them into their clothing to keep safe as they traveled, which also made it easy for those coins to fall into the dirt or between floorboards of homes, all places she has found them.

She has found hundreds of buttons, too, including many from the Civil War from states like South Carolina and New York, along a cow path through her property. The Civil War buttons are inscribed with letters like “I” for infantry or “R” for riflemen. She also found a whole slew of buttons around the old bank barn that was on her property and wonders how many people passed through those doors, and if a seamstress lived on the property.

She likes to try to piece the history together as she finds items. She said she holds them and wonders: “Who did this belong to?”

She has several sites she continuously digs in in her backyard garden as she works to uncover the past—both her family’s and Loudoun’s—and build a peaceful shade garden among the remnants of an old stone structure she thinks may have been part of the original house owned by the Ewers or built when the Quakers came to the area. Cockerill said when she first moved to her house from the larger farmhouse up the road three years ago, the old stone structure behind it had a mountain of trash in it. She worked for a year to clear it out. Then once she got to dirt she began digging until she found a treasure trove of artifacts that belonged to hundreds of years of residents. Those items she keeps in her basement collection in special cases and jars.

The family has reinforced the remaining walls with new mortar, and last year her children installed large slate stones on the floor of the three-sided building so the family could all gather and enjoy the garden.

She said sometimes her grandkids help her dig if it’s in an area where she hasn’t found a lot of glass. She said a lot of the glass bottles she finds date from the 1920s to more modern times. She has also found a lot of pottery around the old foundations and stone walls in her yard.

Cockerill said she wants to do some research to find out about the different patterns on the pottery to determine how old they are.

“I know the feather edge is supposed to be one of the older, first patterns used in colonial times. The red pottery is the oldest,” she said.

She wants to make something out of all the pieces of pottery one day, like a mosaic, to better display them.

One of her favorite finds was a rare belt buckle with an eagle over a rocky mountain. She said she has looked all over in books and online for information on the buckle and said there is only a brief mention of it in a book that says it dates to before the Civil War. But to her knowledge no one else has found one like it.

More of Barbara Cockerill's finds including shoe buckles, belt buckles and coins.

She has also found some items that belonged to her in-laws’ family, including broaches and compacts that belonged to her father-in-law’s five sisters.

“I’m pretty sure I found my father-in-law’s wedding ring in one of the barns,” she said. “He was a big man and it’s a big ring and his kids always talked about how he never had one, so I am assuming he lost it pretty early on. He would be the type to say ‘don’t get me another one.’”

She said she also found his old pocket watch.

She compared what she finds and learning about it to a puzzle and finding all the pieces to make a complete picture.

“I just find it interesting, the history and putting it all together and figuring out who was where, when and how the timeline goes together,” she said, noting that her in-laws bought more of the property at auction after the depression. She is interested to know how they were able to buy more land at that time.

Cockerill said she plans to keep digging and researching “until the story is finished or until there is no one left who wants to tell the story.” And with close to 300 acres, she said she’s just scratched the surface.

“There is less and less things I am finding with the metal detector because they are maybe too deep or because I’ve already been over it in the more concentrated areas, but there could be more down there,” she said.

She said people will show up and say they used to live on the property in one of the tenant houses. She hopes one day someone will come by and recognize one of the buttons she found.

As for what she plans to do with her collection of history, she said she hasn’t thought much about it.

“I think the kids enjoy seeing it and seeing me find things and enjoy the history,” she said. “I’m not sure anyone is going to want to keep it in their house, so I’ll leave it up to them to see if they want to keep adding to it.”

Reporter

Thank you for sharing this story with us!

PS. I think you should buy your son a more expensive metal detector so you can find more artifacts :)

Log In

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd,racist or sexually-oriented language.PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.Don't Threaten. Threats of harming anotherperson will not be tolerated.Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyoneor anything.Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ismthat is degrading to another person.Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link oneach comment to let us know of abusive posts.Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitnessaccounts, the history behind an article.