SEFFNER, Fla. ― It initially seemed like a child’s treasure-hunting tale.
Aaron Defaria’s kids would bring him what they called diamonds, dug out of the shell-and-rock driveway at their Seffner home.
But he thought they were just shiny rocks, chalked it up to childhood imagination and thought little of it.
Then, as the driveway’s shell and rock loosened over the years, his kids began finding more of the shiny objects, and also what looked like tiny stone and iron cannonballs.
Dozens of them.
Defaria asked his amateur historian uncle, Gary Cananzey, to have a look.
Those are pieces of Native American jewelry, plus stone shot and iron shot — projectiles used in battles — Cananzey said, and it all likely dates to the three Seminole Wars, which spanned 1817 to 1858.
“I told him that his driveway looks like a battlefield,” Cananzey said. “But where did it come from? It’s not from here.”
