hidden in plain sight

Ohio farms yield prehistoric treasures

by Seth Teter

The Harness farm sits where the forested hills of Ross County roll out and flatten then softly slip into the Scioto River. A final wave of earth crests beside the farmhouse before leveling along the valley floor. For years this farm held a secret, but no one had looked close enough to notice.

“I had eyes but didn’t see,” said Robert Harness, the farm’s patriarch.

But they were there all along – thousands of historic artifacts. Nearly 20 years of farming and he never saw one. Harness, after all, is no archaeologist. At least he wasn’t.

It was the 1960s when a friend brought Harness news that Indian remains were found a few miles away. His curiosity sparked, Harness accepted an invitation to the discovery site. When he returned, he looked at his own land with new eyes.

And like the first sprouts of a crop breaking through the soil, artifacts started to appear. Harness was discovering for the first time what history had planted thousands of years ago. Over the next four decades, the new “crop” brought a harvest like no other.

Harness hauled in Indian arrowheads, tools and ceremonial carvings by the pocketful. Some date back to 13,000 B.C. Experts tell him they know of no collection like his – thousands of artifacts, each numbered according to where it was discovered.

“I could take you to within 50 feet of where these were picked up,” he said.

The unique collection only adds to the farm’s colorful history. Settled in 1799, it’s one of the oldest farms in the state. Faded signatures of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison appear on the carefully preserved deed. It was home to the finest racehorses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the origin of the first cattle drive from Ohio to the East Coast, according to a Century Farm Award from the Ohio Department of Agriculture.

The Harness family knew it was not the first to occupy this land. A burial mound on the farm, egg shaped and 160 feet long, was reported in 1848, Harness said, and excavated several times through 1907.

“They thought they had found everything,” Harness said. They were wrong. Years of farming uncovered what researchers had missed.

When Harness discovered a gravel ring outlining the mound, he immediately called in archaeologists to resume the excavation. The new dig turned up a copper breastplate and wedge-shaped woodworking tool, called a celt, along with an ancient piece of cloth and beads carved from rodent teeth. Harness donated the artifacts to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Martha Otto, curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, said the work Harness has done is a valuable link to knowledge of the past. Because of the time farmers spend working the land and observing the soil, their keen eyes are valuable resources to experts like Otto.

“The farmers are some of our most important sources of information,” she said.

It’s similar to a story that Mahoning County farmer and Farm Bureau member Raymond Anderson has been piecing together most of his life. Large, impressive arrowheads from his Canfield farm adorn a wall inside his 140-year-old farmhouse. A wooden box he pulled from the bureau held hundreds more.

Anderson was born in this house where his family has farmed since 1813.

Sitting at the dining room table, he scooped arrowheads from a box and let them sift through his age-worn fingers.

“These all came off this farm,” he said. “I’m still amazed there could be so much stuff in one place.”

Behind the house, past the barn and former cattle lot, lies a natural spring where he discovered several artifacts. From the porch, he pointed and traced the ancient flow of the now-sealed spring down the slight slope of a cornfield. His hand stopped; he locked his finger and squinted down the barrel of his arm.

“That’s where I found most of them,” he said.

Anderson thinks this part of his land was a hunting ground. It had been a swamp until his grandfather drained it nearly a century ago. On this day, the shallow stretch of earth collected water from the recent rain. Geese gathered in the sprawling puddle as they often did. A scene from the past emerged.

Speculation comes with each discovery. Holding an ash gray arrowhead, Anderson ran his finger along tally marks notched in the blade shoulder – possibly a calendar.

“Maybe scalps,” he said with a smile.

Anderson, who is 81, said he found his first arrowhead at the age of 11 or 12. He was plowing the land with horses. He said the job made finding them easy because it kept his eyes on the ground.

He spotted one of the larger arrowheads while driving a tractor through a soggy field. Risking being stuck in the mud, he stopped to retrieve it.

“I didn’t know if I would get out,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to run over that arrowhead.”

Passing on the legacy of the land

Anderson is now retired and his son, Wayne, operates the farm. Wayne gets what he can from the corn and soybeans, but the 300-acre farm is starting to look out of place in an increasingly residential area.

He picked up a magazine with a 36- row corn planter on the cover. He laughed, remembering his days as a young man, trudging through the fields behind a horse.

“Farmers have a very intense connection with their land,” the historical society’s Otto said. “These objects show how people in the past have been connected with the same piece of ground.” 

To comment on this article, e-mail info@ourohio.org

If you would like to know more about artifacts that you have found, contact Martha Otto at 614-297-2641.

Attention teachers and parents: A student activity based on Ohio's academic content standards is available with this article.

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