Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Here is what James F. has been able to learn after researching his copper railroad freight tag that I showed in my 4/9/14 post.
Well, I've been researching the old copper freight tag and have found some interesting information concerning it. It is a freight tag from the original South Florida Rail Road Company which was established in Sanford, Florida in 1879, built in 1880 and run from Sanford to Orlando from 1880 thru 1886 before becoming, in 1887, the "Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Line," until becoming the "Plant Line" from 1889 until 1905, then the Atlantic Coast Line until from 1905 until 1969 then finally CSX, the current Florida railroad. So the tag can be dated somewhere between 1880 and 1886. The tag itself denotes a shipment of perhaps 127 "8 IN FLUE THIMBLES" which is the piece of hardware used in a building that is fixed to the inside to allow the smoke or stove exhaust to exit to to the outside. An interesting look at life 128 to 134 years ago :-)
Jim made a great historical find and made it all the more significant and interesting by doing the research. Thanks James, and congratulations!
Below is a picture showing a flue thimble. This one shown below is for a wood burning stove.
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| Source:http://www.woodstove-outlet.com/woodstove/Insulated-Thimble-Wall-Pass-Though.htm |
That would be an important piece of hardware back then.
This picture from the Florida Memory Project shows the scene in 1886.
And here is a paragraph from the Florida Memory Project.
1886: Rail Service Reaches Central Florida Rail service was completed between Jacksonville and the central Florida town of Sanford, on Lake Monroe. Although steamboat travel was just reaching a pinnacle of popularity, with seventy-four vessels running out of Jacksonville, the penetration of railroads into central Florida spelled the beginning of the end for the steamboat era.
Here is the link, which provides a nice time line of significant historical developments.
http://www.theriverreturns.org/explore/history/text/19/
I made a good many mistakes in yesterday's post. I must of been half asleep or something. Anyhow, I think I got them corrected.
For one thing I said that the second most frequently selected topic in the poll was Treasure Coast beach conditions, and that is correct. However, I said that it got 15% of the votes, which is wrong. It got 24%.
So the two most frequently selected "favorite" topics were Treasure Coast finds (36%) and T. C. beach conditions (24%).
Next in order was historical and archaeological information (15%), followed closely by beach dynamics (12%).
Both of those will help you be more successful. For me, beach dynamics is a very important topic. If you learn to understand a beach, you can really improve your time efficiency by quickly identifying and spending your time on the most productive areas.
Detecting and recovery techniques were not far behind getting (10%) of the vote. I don't present a lot of that. I prefer to not cover a lot of stuff that is common knowledge. Sometimes I have to give some background, but normally I try to add to what is common knowledge rather than repeating a lot of it. I think you'll find some of my rough-water working techniques to be relatively unique, for example.
Only one person selected non-metallic finds as their favorite topic and no one selected big treasure finds from around the world.
The poll asked people to select their one most favorite topic. That is entirely different from asking what topics people are interested in and allowing multiple responses, and it has to be interpreted differently.
To me it was surprising how many different topics were the "most" favorite topic for different people.
On the Treasure Coast the tides are a little bigger. It looked like near a full moon last night.
Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox.
We have only about a three foot surf today. The wind was fairly strong from the South today.
The surf is expected to increase Thursday, after a North wind on Wednesday evening. That might be worth checking out. We'll see if the surf gets up to its predicted size Thursday.
I've been going through some old 8mm family movie film from the 50s and looking for whatever I might want to have converted to DVD. I showed one small piece of family film in this blog back some time ago. But what struck me is that after going through reels and reels of film, the only thing I really want to have copied and preserved are movies of the people. Many of them are now gone, while others are 50 or 60 years older. I don't much care about the places and things that they thought were neat enough to capture on film. The only stuff that I care about preserving now, all these years later, are the people. I'm glad that I have some of that captured on film. All the other stuff doesn't seem to matter much.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
