A HENRY VIII CUT COIN
“The metal detecting bug bit me hard after I found my very first Civil War minnie ball. I remember clearly when I pulled it out of the dirt, seeing this small but powerful instrument of death.”
I will begin by sharing my interest in metal detecting and how it came to be my favourite pastime – it started with my love for all things history. My late father was an avid reader, history being his ‘thing’. He constructed a mini library in our small home when I was just a small child and was always reading cool things about the American Civil War, the American Revolutionary War, the British Empire, colonial expansion and the World Wars.
Our family migrated to America in 1636 and settled land granted by the King of England, Charles I. The Anderson Clan we came from was attached to the Rose Clan located outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. Our family settled in Orange County, Virginia for many generations until the itch for exploration which led to movements west, south, and some to the east nearer the coastline. We have a rich history, with ties to one American President, William McKinley, who shares a grandfather with us. Our ancestors fought and served in the Revolutionary War; I have three direct Great, Great, Great, Great-Grandfathers who served in the army and fought in the south, mainly against General Cornwallis. Afterwards, my family served in both the Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War and fought for the beliefs they believed were right in their time. Since, we have had family members serve in both World Wars and the many conflicts since, ending with my eldest son serving in the United States army.
As you can see, history runs very deep in my blood. My father would take my brother and I to every battlefield, from Virginia to the Mississippi River and everything in between. It was so much fun walking the very grounds where my ancestors fought and so many others paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Being a young man in my teenage years, my attention turned towards surfing and it quickly became my life’s passion. Being in the ocean was a natural calling, but my thoughts would always return to the history around me.
I joined the fire service in 1992 as a very young and active 18-year-old; this gave me some money, which at the time I thought was a lot, and 20 days off a month due to the 24 hour shift schedules. After a few years, I got assigned to a slower station due to going to college and having time to study for promotions. It was here, when I was 22, that I saw one of the old timers cleaning some relics he had found in a local farm field in the next county over. The Civil War was fought all around my area due to our location on the James River, the Norfolk Naval Base, Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Richmond just 70 miles away. I was very interested in these relics, and he explained that he had found them with his metal detector. Previously I had thought that metal detecting was something old men did on the beach looking for jewellery and other dropped trinkets, since I would always see them while surfing. Never did I imagine I could ask permission from a private landowner and gain access to areas near the many battlefields in my region.
Not long afterwards, Herbie gave me some advice on which metal detector to purchase; the technology was starting to ramp up on the newer VLF machines and before I knew it, I had my first metal detector. It was a White’s Spectrum with a digital screen and icons that would pop up with a number value to help you decide to dig or not to dig. I quickly realised that you just dig it all and see what pops up to learn the sounds instead of the numbers and icons.
The metal detecting bug bit me hard after I found my very first Civil War minnie ball. I remember clearly when I pulled it out of the dirt, seeing this small but powerful instrument of death. I sat down and realised that I was holding a real piece of American history in my hands, staring at this bullet and thinking that the last human to touch this was fighting at the Battle of Deserted House in Suffolk, Virginia on 1st January 1863. My father was so thrilled about my exciting finds; I came home, and we cleaned the many other Civil War relics I had found that day together. How cool, from reading about these battles in the books to holding items from the event! Dad would sometimes come out and walk the fields with me, which were very special times indeed.
Fast forward many years, a marriage and three wonderful children later, but I never gave up on metal detecting. I would take my sons and daughter with me on trips to the fields and woods in search of the next treasure; the kids just wanted to find coins and shiny things to make us rich, which was so much fun, but they did not fully understand that the items that I collected represented our nation’s wars and settlements through the many centuries since our founding at Jamestown. They soon grew out of it, leaving me with my hobby and the friends I met along the way, who have taught me so much.
I bought many different detectors over the years and ended up settling on the Minelab Explorer series of machines, finally with their ETRAC – oh, what a machine it was! My finds increased rapidly, especially in silver coins; this machine, used slowly, was simply a vacuum cleaner for coins and buttons. I was a loyal user for many years, but after a while the weight of the ETRAC caught up with me, and so did age, as my right shoulder finally gave out. That is when I discovered the XP Deus I (and now II) – what can I say? The lightness, the lightning speed of recovery and the many programme options meant that I could swing all day with no pain whatsoever. I even went back to areas I had already pounded, only to find so much more hidden in the heavy iron areas.
This now leads us to my current area of detecting. Though I still search for Civil War and Rev War relics, the colonial relic bug hit me hard after finding so many cut Spanish coins and various artefacts on random home sites. I realised that there was a common theme to this style of detecting – namely the heavy iron nails, the brick, the broken pottery and glass that was lying around these sites, usually around the rivers and creeks on high ground in the corners of cultivated fields, way off the beaten path and modern roadways, in rural areas. How was this so, and why so far off the roads? Well, it was the waterways of the times that brought in supplies and transportation. Water was life, simply put! I began to research the Library of Virginia, land patents, reading topo maps, and talking with the elders of the communities. Before long, I was granted access to many farms and then through word of mouth, I gained more and more land to search. My honest approach, my willingness to show my relics to the landowners and give them display cases, and my attention to detail and respect of their land gave me endless possibilities. Soon, I had more land than I could search by myself and I began to network with a very small group of fellow detectorists who had similar interests and values.
And so it began – colonial relic hunting was born! We would do our research over the summer months and make contact with potential landowners to gain permission for the winter months, to search the empty fields and wood lots free of hunters. We would network together and share sites to see who could find the best relics of the season. Which leads me to the relic hunt on which the Henry VIII cut coin was found.
Three friends headed out on 9th February 2025, Super Bowl Sunday in America. I am a lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and this day was a big day for my team, so I told my friends we had until 3.00pm so I could get back home and settle in for the big game. We visited three new sites that we have never metal detected; two were cultivated fields free from crops, and the third – to our surprise – was a pasture (we do not have many pasture areas we are allowed to detect on due to cattle or expensive horse farms). The area we were visiting was in Surry County, Virginia. This county was old, by American standards, since it is located right across the James River from the Jamestown settlement.
Captain John Smith explored this area in 1608 and one of the creeks he explored was next to this property. There were good signs of occupation in the fields, as we could see broken pieces of bricks and pottery lying on the surface, so we fired up our machines and started to explore the area. We quickly realised that there were home sites from the early to mid-1800s mixed in with the older relics we were searching for, so after digging lots of trash and unwanted targets, we turned to the pasture next to the fields. It was here that we slowly started finding relics from the mid 1700s. This was an encouraging sign, as there could have been an older undocumented house site in this area. The stubble was a little challenging at first due to the amount of water from recent heavy rains and melting snow, but the day was breezy and the wind was drying the water up quickly. After about an hour we had little to show for our efforts and were becoming a little frustrated with the lack of concentrated targets and minimal iron patches, but while regrouping at the truck I noticed something in the back corner of the pasture. The wind had started to become gusty and I could see the sheen of light coming from English Ivy growing on some of the trees, which for some reason we did not notice earlier. My friends were quick to dismiss this due to the lack of targets and iron in the areas we had searched so far, but they agreed to walk with me since my instincts often pay off.
Once we made it to the area of interest, we fanned out in search of some iron patches. It was a wooded area, quite thick, with desirable targets not coming up. Right next to this area was a small knoll in the pasture. I asked if anyone had gone over it earlier and my buddy Mike said that he had, but he hadn’t found anything and left the area after a few passes over the highest part of the knoll.
I decided to try my luck and double check, since it had “that look”! I began my first pass and got a 72 hit; thinking shotgun shell I decided to dig. I found a piece of random brass and some orangish brick with it in the hole. Not saying anything to Mike and Darren yet, I made a small grid and found some more brass items and again, brick was present. I was getting excited as I believed there was going to be a tell-tale iron patch soon that would reveal a colonial period home site. I noticed that Mike and Darren were slowly making their way back towards to the truck and decided to work the sloping areas, thinking that past faming activities may have pulled items down. It was here that I got a solid 64 to 66 signal on my Deus II (the 60 range rarely produces quality relics and most of the time it ends up being shotgun shells, modern small bullets, or pieces of scrap brass items). I dug a plug of about five inches, sifted with my pin-pointer and out came a small, clipped piece of silver.
My first thought was that it was a common colonial house site find for us in our region, the 1700s clipped Spanish Pistareen – we find many of these coins due to the lack of currency in colonial times and trade with the Spanish along the coastal waterways. I was very excited to see a legit colonial coin pop out, so I yelled for the guys to come back over and slow down. While waiting for them to view my find, I started to slowly clean the coin with water and noticed quickly that this was not a Spanish cut silver coin. As my friends made it over to me, I told them that I thought I had something different – perhaps an English hammered coin? Of course, they laughed and thought I was really reaching for the stars with that comment. But, after closer examination we all agreed it was possibly an English coin of some type – but we do not find hammered English coins in our area, and I know of only one person who has been lucky enough to find a hoard.
We went back to detecting, finding some flat buttons which indicated that we were on a colonial site, but Mike and Darren were ready to move on, so I sent some pictures of my find to another friend who sent back pictures indicating that it was a James 1 hammered coin. I could see that Jamestown was barely seven miles away across the river, so the next day I decided to go to Facebook and search for a British Metal Detecting group – UK History Finders gave me an incredible response; the excitement and sheer joy for this find was very apparent right away. When Gregory Edmund of Spink made comments on the potential discovery everyone listened closely, and after sending a more detailed set of pictures it was confirmed that I had discovered a Henry VIII cut silver groat. The date range was 1509-1547 and left me completely stunned and speechless. I have never found a coin from the 1500s, and here I was, holding one in my hand! How could it be, a coin this old in America? Then I began to think back to those first English settlers who defied all odds to establish a colony in 1607, right across the James River, and about the possibilities that surround the coin and its journey to America so long ago. That is what I love about metal detecting – you just never know what the ground will give up on the next swing. Maybe one day I will make it over to England and find a Roman coin that is 2000 years old!
Readers can access the live video of the find on YouTube via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdmUvcXaZYQ
By Wes Anderson