Marbles are always a fun little discovery. It seems one or two always seems to find its way into every dump and outhouse I’ve ever dug. Occasionally I will find a small collection of them together, perhaps dumped as punishment by a disgruntled parent. In very early sites the marbles tend to be clay with hand painted designs. If only these little orbs could talk!
This marble was dug in an 1860s pit at a homestead in the Pacific Northwest. It is a clay marble with hand-painted decorations. The earliest marbles were clay like this.
A collection of my earliest marbles. Notice how crude and bumpy these early versions are. Perhaps that is why they were thrown away! I once got into a cache of 20 early clay marbles, all very lumpy and likely rejects.
All of My Dug Marbles as of 2014. These range in age from 1860s to 1940s.
