Mark Masoni to offer program on metal detector techniques

GILMANTON IRON WORKS — The Gilmanton Historical Society presents a special program featuring Mark Masoni demonstrating the technique of finding hidden artifacts with his metal detector. The program will be held at Old Town Hall on Tuesday, July 30, at 6 p.m.

 

Masoni has been metal detecting since 2001. He enjoys unearthing historical relics, returning lost items, finding coins, and sharing his hobby with others.  Masoni detects responsibly by filling his holes and covering them as they were found, never detecting without permission, and returning artifacts connected to the property. His finds include a lost gold wedding band and other rings, early Civil War tokens, and various coins from the last three centuries, the oldest being a Spanish silver 1793 Dos Reales, minted in Madrid.

 

Masoni, of San Jose, California, spends part of each summer in Gilmanton avidly pursuing his hobby. An artist who has studied education and theater design, Masoni has been active in the Society for Creative Anachronism and has a passion for history. With his metal detector, Masoni can determine what sort of metal is under the ground and how deeply it is buried. Much of the time what turns up is a tarnished dime or a rusty bolt, but he has made exciting finds. He found an academic prize medallion that dates from the days when Gilmanton Academy was a well-regarded preparatory school, and a penny that dates to the Civil War. At The Colonial, the present home of Pat and Linda Clarke, he found a silver thimble with initials he thinks to be those of a woman in the Crosby family who lived there in the early 1800s. In the shallow waters of Loon Pond he pulled out a silver name bracelet with initials of Hope Rodman Kitchen, a relative of his mother-in-law. Kitchen remembers losing the bracelet in the 1930s.

 

The society’s summer series continues with The 12th New Hampshire Regiment During the Civil War on Aug. 27, and A Brief History of Gilmanton’s Churches on Sept. 24. The programs are free and open to the public.  Donations are accepted to support the society's work.