Swann House 1729 - 1774

 

This past weekend was our first public archaeology weekend at the Swann Site. We’ll be hosting one public weekend a month through at least the end of September. Our next weekend is Saturday and Sunday, July 22nd and 23rd. Weather permitting we’ll be on site from 10 AM until 2 PM each day. Stop by and visit us to see what we’ve been up to! If you’re interested in volunteering drop me a line, no experience is necessary. Reade@charlescountymd.gov

Top: Kim, Linda, and Denise in the yard area.
Bottom: Tiara working on a post feature
next to the stone foundation.

Last weekend we worked in a unit in what was the “backyard” of the Swann House. In the  past, before the advent of electricity, in-door plumbing, and air conditioning, many activities took place in the yard of the home. This included washing and drying clothes, sewing and mending because the light was good, some cooking (especially on hot summer days), making soap and candles, raising chickens, and tending to a small garden plot. As far as I know, no one has left  a written record of the daily activities at Swann house, but I may be able to find some activity areas in the yard that give me a hint as to what people were doing. An area with ash and charcoal may indicate that there was a fire at a particular spot. A high incidence of broken everyday dishes and pots could indicate the location of a cooking area. And an area with a mixture of broken dishes, animal bones (indicating food remains), and broken glass vessels and bottles is probably associated with a midden – a term archaeologist use to denote a trash pile. 

Bridget working with 18th-century documents

To understand the connections between the archaeological artifacts and people, we try to collect archival data and if possible oral histories about the people who lived or worked at  the site. Sometimes this isn’t possible. The records were lost  or destroyed, there are no living descendants or individuals who can share their recollections, or the people who lived at the site were tenants or enslaved and no one bothered to write anything about them because they and  their personal stories weren’t considered important enough to record. In the latter case all we have is the archaeological record and we can often reconstruct past lifeways for marginalized people from the material culture they leave behind. In other cases we do have records – maps, land deeds, court records, wills and other probate records, census records, newspaper accounts, diaries, letters, and sometimes even autobiographies or biographies. At Swan House we have don’t have a great deal of information about who lived at the site from 1729 when Charles Town (now known as Port Tobacco) was founded until Patrick Graham purchased the land in 1774. After this purchase the written record concerning who lived at the house is more robust.

So who lived and worked at Swan House? We know James Swann and his family lived there from the early 1840s through 1911. But as it turns out a very diverse group of people who included enslaved and free men and women also lived and/or worked there both before and after the Swann family. These individuals included merchants (or shop keepers), tailors, tavern and restaurant owners, domestic servants, enslaved individuals, a hostler (someone who works with horses at an inn) and fisherman, a school teacher, and tobacco farmers.

In An American Inn or The Village Tavern
John Lewis Krimmel, 1813-1814

Satirical engraving with the interior of an 18th-century store
Published by Carington Bowles, circa 1770

The first owner was Henry Holland Hawkins, a wealthy planter who purchased the Swann House lot, then known as Lot 4, on 9 October 1729.[i] This was the second day of lot sales for the newly formed Charles Town, which was also the new county seat. The 1729 Maryland Act of Assembly establishing Charles Town required purchasers to erect a structure that covered 400 square feet within 18 months. Failure to do so would result in forfeiture of the property. Each of the town lots covered approximately half an acre.[ii] Hawkins met the conditions, but whether he constructed the stone foundation currently on the property or not is a question that we hope this excavation will solve. The foundation covers approximately 576 square feet, well over the required 400 square feet. Hawkins owned a plantation - Hawkins Purchase (east of La Plata) - that he inherited in 1699 at the age of 16. By the time Henry purchased the lot in Port Tobacco he was in his late 40s, married with a family, and was a planter who held a large number of people in bondage (his probate records list 35 enslaved individuals). Clearly the Port Tobacco lot was never meant to be his home. He may have used it as a warehouse for his tobacco before it was shipped to England, or he may have used it as a store or leased it to other people. When he died in 1751 he left a large estate valued at 1,753 pounds, 14 shillings, and 1 pence.[iii]

James Scott’s Indentured servant
was named Alice Cooper,
fortunately it wasn't this Alice Cooper

In 1741, a decade before his death, Hawkins divided Lot 4 in half and sold a one-quarter acre with a store house to the merchant James Scott for £20.[iv] Scott also owned another half-acre lot in town (Lot 94) that he had purchased in 1738 from Walter Pye. Scott died intestate (without a will) in late 1742 or early 1743. As he was unmarried, his modest estate went to his siblings. Scott was not a slave owner; he had a single indentured servant, who had 6 years left to serve on her indenture. Walter Scott, James’s brother eventually took control of the property.[v] 

The remaining half of Lot 4 stayed in the Hawkins family and was inherited in 1751 by his widow Jane Hawkins and their children. It eventually ended up in the possession of their grandson Henry Waring.[vi] On 25 February 1774, Waring sold his half of the property to Patrick Graham, who was a tailor. Later in the year, on 20 June, Graham was able to take possession of Walter Scott’s half of the lot because Scott died without heirs and the property escheated (or went back to) Lord Baltimore. Graham received an unpatented certificate of survey for the property that stated: “On the above Land is an Old dwelling house 18 feet by 12 feet with a small outside wooden Chimney.”[vii]

This reproduction house at Londontown in Edgewater, Maryland,
has a wood chimney and may be similar to the one that stood on the Scott Lot.

Ok, now comes the newest puzzle. The records indicate there was one buildings on Lot 4, a small old dwelling house on Scott’s land, that Henry Hawkins called a storehouse in 1741. We know we have a stone foundation that measures 18 by 32 feet. Does this mean there’s two buildings or, did Graham add on to the original building? I don’t know, we hope to answer this question as the summer progresses.

We are beginning to pick up evidence of the Graham family’s occupation of the property. Small pieces of Creamware, a type of ceramic used in the late eighteenth century, were recovered over the weekend along with tiny fragments of brown stoneware. As these pieces are still waiting to be cleaned in the lab. I don’t have photographs of them, instead I’ve pulled some photos of more-or-less whole pieces of Creamware so you’ll get an idea of what the tiny pieces we’re finding might be a part of.

Creamware Plate
and Cup
Fort Michilimackinac Museum
2009

Creamware was first manufactured in England in 1760 by Josiah Wedgewood and became popular after he made a set for Queen Charlotte. Known as Queens Ware it was in Chesapeake region stores by 1768, although wealthy planters began to order it directly from Britain a few years before that.[viii] Patrick Graham was a tailor, but he also had friends that were engaged in the import business. One in particular, John Baillie, got Graham in a great deal of trouble during the Revolutionary War because of a small smuggling escapade that the two were involved in. But that’s a story for the next installment.

We’re out of the field this weekend celebrating the 4^th and our Freedom from Queen Charlotte’s husband George III with our families and friends. I wish you all a very happy holiday! 

 

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[i] Charles County Land Records (CCLR) Book M no. 2, folio 179.

[ii] “An Act for the Laying out of Land, and erecting a Town at the Head of Port-Tobacco Creek, in Charles County.” Maryland Archives, Vol. 36, page 456.

[iii] Charles County Orphans Court Records, Wills Book AC no. 4, folio 327.

[iv] CCLR Book O no. 2, folio 405.

[v] Charles County Orphans Court Records, Inventories 1735-1753, page 190; Administrative Accounts 1738-59, page160. Maryland Archives, Vol. 862, page 310. Provincial Court Records Unpatented Certificate #270.

[vi] CCLR Book S no. 3, folio 585.

[vii] Provincial Court Records Unpatented Certificate #270.

[viii] Two good sources of information about trade in the Chesapeake Region in the eighteenth century are Ann Smart Martin, Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia, 2010, Johns Hopkins University Press and Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 2007, Oxford University Press.