By Brian R. Ballou
Globe Staff / October 24, 2009

Palmetto trees and other vegetation covered the stretch of sand Robert E. Bohrn longed to sweep with his metal detector, but then bulldozers came and uprooted the wild growth and scraped away several feet of sand, unearthing a neatly combed relic hunter’s dream.

The year was 1987, and the development of a subdivision was underway on Folly Island, S.C. Bohrn, a Civil War buff, visited the cleared space with Eric Croen, another relic hunter, and they began finding corroded Union buttons and other fragments of the country’s volatile past.