That time I found a 150 year old work boot in a crawl space

Last month I was tearing out an old addition on a house in St. Louis and crawled into this tiny dirt crawl space to check the foundation. It was dark and dusty, and I kept bumping my head on these old beams. Then my hand hit something hard and I pulled out this leather boot that was basically fossilized. I took it to a local historian and she said it was from around the 1870s based on the square nails in the sole. The owner of the house said there were stories about a shoemaker living there during the Civil War era. Has anyone else ever found something old and unexpected on a job site like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliag102mo ago

Read somewhere that Civil War era boots had those square nails to grip muddy streets (pretty cool, huh).

hugo_schmidt14d ago

Honestly it's just old shoes with nails, not that deep lol.

jenny_coleman2mo ago

Those square nails are called "hobnails" and they were a total pain in the rear if you ever had to walk on hardwood floors with them. Sounded like a whole marching band following you around. Plus, they'd pop out after a few months of heavy wear and you'd end up stepping on a loose nail inside your boot. Had a pair of reproduction boots with them once, the mud grip was decent but the noise drove me crazy.

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