I'm on Vacation - Enjoy Some Swann House Artifacts.

IOV (I’m on Vacation)! While I’m gone I thought I’d share some artifacts from our Swann House excavations.

The artifacts in the photograph above are from unit 2, which is on the south side of the stone foundation of the Swann House. They are from two different eras of occupation associated with the Graham and Swann families respecively. The Graham occupation is represented by the Creamware (center left) and the blue transfer print in the upper left hand corner. The former was first manufactured in 1760 and begins showing up in Chesapeake stores around 1768. The American Revolution stopped its import until the late 1780s/early 1790s when we’d resumed trade with Britain. The two blue transfer print pearlware sherds (top row left), were first manufactured in Britain in the 1780s, but really didn’t make an appearance on the United States market until circa 1790. Imports were steady up until the War of 1812, when trade once again stopped.  

The ceramics on the right are both from the end of the Graham and Sheriburn ownership and the early period of James Swann’s occupation of the property. On the left is a fragment of red sponge decorated whiteware and on the right a rim portion of a light blue transfer printed linear border pattern on whiteware. The former postdates 1830 and the latter was popular between about 1833 and 1858.

Example of Red Sponge Ware Tea Cup

Left - Sherd of Rockingham from Unit 2
Right - Rockingham Paneled Tea Pot, Museum of Ceramics, East Liverpool, Ohio
These were manufactured between the 1840s and 1930s

The second unit next to the house (Unit 4) also has a mixture of Creamware and early to mid-nineteenth century ceramics.  In the photograph above, the blue and green rims in the center row on the left are pieces of plates, the design is called edge ware by archaeologists and has a production date from about 1800 into the 1830s. These were generally undecorated in the center of the plate (although there were some with designs) and were everyday dishes, sort of the Corelle ware of the nineteenth century. These could be associated either with the Grahams/Sheriburns or the Swanns. The top row features parts of a sprig painted tea cup (left) and saucer (right), which were produced between 1835 and the 1870s. These wares are associated with the Swann family occupation, as are the remaining sherds in the photograph. In the center on the right is part of a green transfer printed plate with field dots above the flower. This ceramic was made in Britain between 1832 and about 1841 (when field dots went out of fashion). The brown transfer print was popular between 1829 and 1843. The purple sponge decorated sherd on the bottom left was in production from the 1820s through 1860s. It’s peak popularity was in the 1830s.

Part of my personal
19th-Century Ceramic Collection

I know that it seems that ceramics are the only objects that we’ve recovered from these two units, they’re not – it’s an artifact of my own obsession with nineteenth century ceramics. We’ve also recovered nails, roofing slate (which was a surprise as the historic photograph of the houses shows wood shingles) pieces of metal, fragments of bottle glass, and the one-inch button in the photograph below. 

The button looks modern doesn’t it? The back stamp tells a different story; it was manufactured by the Novelty Rubber Company which closed in 1886. The earliest the button could date is 1853, which is when the company was organized in Connecticut. It moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1855. They made hard rubber items such as tobacco pipes and dress buttons. While Patrick Graham had a tailor shop on the property, this button was not associated with him but was instead associated with the Swann family.

Front and Back of Novelty Rubber Company Button
One Inch Diameter
Unit 4 of Swann House Excavation
The unit may be located under the shed addition of the house.

Inside the house in the fireplace units we’ve recovered later bottles associated with the last years of the Swann family’s occupation of the house. Sallie Swann died in 1911 and the family sold the property in 1914. The 1910 census lists Sallie and her son John as the sole residents of the house. John was employed as a laborer doing odd jobs.

The Rumford Baking Powder Bottle on the right postdates 1906. The various marking on the bottle include a suction mark on the base, indicating that it was manufactured on an Owens Automatic Bottle Machine. What is interesting is that the mold seams between the sides and the neck don't line up, which makes it appear to be a mold-blown bottle. However, there is a mold seam (barely visible around the base of the lip, indicating that it is a machine made bottle and probably an early one at that.

Another bottle fragment recovered in the house was part of a rye whiskey bottle. The embossing suggests that it was made by A. Overholt & Co. Distillers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Overholts began distilling whiskey in Western Pennsylvania in 1810, but didn’t move to large scale production until the 1850s.The company head, Abraham Overholt, died in 1870 and ownership passed to his grandson Henry Clay Frick and Frick’s friends Andrew Mellon and Andrew Mauck. Frick and Mellon were millionaries in their own right, Frick from coal and coke and Mellon in banking. When Frick died in 1919, Mellon inherited his share and was the dominant partner. Prohibition ended commercial alcohol sales in 1919 and two years later Mellon became the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Warren G. Harding. This meant Mellom administered licenses for medicinal whiskey to a few distilleries - his own included in that number. Overholt is still made today by Jim Beam.

Hope you are all having an enjoyable last few weeks of summer. I'll be back in the lab or field next next week.