“But that doesn’t mean it’s been sitting against that tree since 1882.”
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Exactly! Someone could have left it there, for whatever reason, at some point during the 20th century. We’ll probably never know the exact year.
When we lived in Yorktown Virginia in 1960 I bought a pistol that had been found on the Yorktown Battlefield. It was at a yard sale and I paid $10. The barrel was missing but the carved stock and brass side plates still look good, weathered but good. I took it to an antique gun dealer and he said it had been made between 1730 and 1760 in France. It was found in a very remote part of the battlefield I guess that it had laid there since the Revolutionary War, possibly beside the body of a soldier.