Cane Knife - 19th Century Florida Artifact

Almost two years ago, my wife Patti, excavated an interesting artifact...and a sharp one at that. A heavy iron blade, which she brought over to show me, after having managed to dig it out of a 12" deep hole. She said "Well, I kept digging and the signal kept going and going and going..." which turned out to be about 22" long and sharp as a razor! 

It weighed quite a bit...probably around 7 to 10 pounds, and we spent a good deal of time trying to research it. We went to several museums in our local area, who were somewhat condescending and looked down their nose at us. "Well, we don't have anything we can compare it to," said one curator, very much interested in straightening a wall-hanging rather than look at the elongated piece of rusty metal we had brought in. Another museum and another curator glanced at it and said "Probably a piece of old farm machinery..." and left it at that, uninterested in our view that it was not found on a farm, and did not, in any way, resemble any known piece of farm machine we could locate in our research. We found it quite curious that these institutions were less than enthusiastic about the artifact, even though we had the location, orientation and depth of the object recorded. Finally, Patti said, "Let's take it by the Seminole County Museum of History; they always seem interested in local history...and they are much nicer!"
The head curator was not in when we got to the museum, but an assistant was there, and said "Wow!" when we showed him the knife. Shocked that we got a response like that, after our previous encounters, we were informed that he would like to hold onto it and research it a bit. We headed off into Sanford for a bite to eat and some perusal of local antique stores when we got a call a few hours later from the assistant curator. "It's a sugarcane knife...it looks like it was made by a blacksmith, from the leaf-spring of an old horse-drawn wagon...looks like around 1890 or so." He went on, "The tip is clipped, which is rare in this type of knife." A few days later we returned to the museum and the curator was available. They were planning an exhibit about the history of the sugarcane industry industry in Central Florida and they wanted to know if we could loan them the knife for the upcoming show. Patti said "It's been sitting on the piano in our garage for more than a year...it's yours!"

The blade, 22" long, was dug  12" deep...a smithy produced sugarcane knife cir 1890

 They were pretty pleased and planned to use some museum techniques in cleaning and restoring the blade. Patti was pretty pleased herself in finally getting her artifact on display, and out of the garage. I concurred as I could picture me taking out the garbage one afternoon, only to have the knife fall on my foot on the walk back in, and losing a few toes in the process. The curator also asked us to spread the word to other metal detectorists about bringing their finds to the museum for documentation and possible analysis. So here I am, spreading it.