Post by tasmanianartist on Mar 9, 2022 9:59:39 GMT
This might come close ... scythe approx late 19th century
It occurred to me that, since this is an international forum, Australian members might find this helpful in certain circumstances (e.g. if having convicts in one's ancestry - here in Oz nowadays quite novel, and one never knows, stranger things have happened.)
Early 1990s, I found buried in the grass roots, on the edge of a stubborn bush of weeds, on our horse paddock the depicted scythe - the horses had grazed that particular patch bare, and also used it as their favourite galloping thoroughfare. We had been told stories of an 'old man' on the property who periodically walked through the paddocks at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, and with a hand scythe cut the bramble and thistle and other weeds for obvious reasons since he grazed cows.
I became interested, but back in them days, internet research was still Utopia. So, my efforts hit a dead end - even the library couldn't help me any further, and I had no idea where to go from there ... then, in 2018, the scythe, which had until then hung under the roof of the pergola, caught my attention again. Enter internet resources, right back to the 'Old Bailey' and other convict sentencing courts in good old England, and to boost this, the continuity of said resources in Australia, on the appropriate history websites of government departments.
I'm pretty sure what I found belonged to a convict sentenced to deportation for the 'term of his natural life' as a 14-year old. We've since moved away from the farm, but I took the scythe with me. Comparing wood of the handle, and metal of the blade, with other farm implements of the era that had wasted away in the weather in some forgotten corner of a remote paddock, they show the same deterioration and rust etc. (I used to dabble in antique stuff).
But since the small research essay was only ever in digital form, I've now also made a printed copy, together with two other, likewise digital, texts in the same book (also Lulu, and private), in keeping with my efforts to have a physical version of my work. (The PDF is available with Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.)
Just sharing ... prompted by a 170-yr-old axe ...
Cheerio