The Curse of Oak Island: TWO HUGE FINDS IN ONE DAY (Season 8) | History

Wow, this is fantastic.
It’s a little cuff button, that’s what that is,
in the uplands northeast of the triangle-shaped swamp.
Metal detection expert Gary Drayton and David Fernetti
have just made a potentially telling discovery along the stone pathway.

Now, you can see it’s a single loop.
That’s the back where it would have fastened onto
a sleeve of a shirt or a jacket, so
I would say this looks military, more than likely a little
military cuff button. That’s a sweet find,
and if I was dating it, I’d put it at 1750 to 1850.
A possible military style button dating back half a century before the discovery of the money pit.

Although Rick, Marty, and the team have found evidence of both British and French military activity on Oak Island
that predates 1795,
could this military button help identify just who was behind the pathway’s construction?
It’s got a lot of detail on that, a lot of design.
So when that’s cleaned up, we’ll definitely be able to date this.
It’s a nice little find, cracking little button.
If we can get a regiment, we can get a date,
we can get a nationality, you can gleam a lot of information
off one single button. This could be a very
valuable find.

Having been alerted to the discovery of a possible bend
in the stone pathway, Rick Lagina, along with Oak Island historian Doug Krull,
arrived to help with the investigation.

“It looks a lot different.”
“Oh yeah, yeah, so…
So, just yeah, we just want to…
I think this is the elbow, so we just want to make sure…”
“This right here?”
“Yeah, yeah, is Gary metal detecting that?”
“Over there in the pile is his dump.”
“Yes, I wonder if we should get him in here right now?”
“Might as well, better to do it here than up on the hill.”
“Yeah. Hey, Gary, come in! Gonna come down here and do this?”
“Yep, I’ll come down.”

“Anything interesting down here?”
“Not yet. You’re about to find it!”
“Alright. Dope, this is gonna be fun.”
“Yeah, I feel like we’re getting closer,
but we’re definitely getting some signals. There’s definitely something here.”
“Okay, it’s definitely iron by the sound of it.”
“Yep, right there.”

“This is a decent chunk.”
“Wow, you got it out!”
“Yeah, what the heck? This kinda reminds me of an old fire grate.”
“That’s what that reminds me of, I bet this is part of the fire grate.”
“A possible fire grate, but look how big that charcoal feature is.”

Just one week ago, the Oak Island team
uncovered the remains of what appears to be an ancient fire pit next to the stone pathway.
“You got this big stone, and then above it,
a big stone. And in that area, you got the fire.”
“A fire pit, that much like the pine tar kiln
discovered earlier this year on lot 15,
was likely used for a major construction operation.”

Because the archaeological team suspects
that the pine tar kelp was used to construct the original money pit,
they are just as curious to identify what the fire pit near the swamp was used to create.
Could the discovery of a possible fire grate bring them closer to finding out?

“Makes sense if you think about it. It could be some kind of grate that they used on the fire,
and they go back a long way. They go back all the way to Romans.”
“This is a great find. This is getting exciting!”
“Alright, see if we’ve got anything else.”