It’s been awhile since I’ve
posted, but we (me, CCASM, and our volunteers) have been busy at the Swann
Oyster House site and in the lab. We had great weather in the spring, but the
heat in late June and through July was heinous. Now that the temps have finally
dropped (and we can get back out of the lab), the summer is almost over and
school is about to begin. Some of our group will be heading back to college or
off to the military, I’ll be back in the classroom at UMBC teaching evening
classes, and fall activities will be starting. I thought that since our summer
vacation is drawing to a close I’d share some of what we’ve been up to since
the beginning of the year.
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First Day of the 2024 Excavation Season at the Swann Oyster House 26 February 2024 |
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UMBC Performing Arts and Humanities Building with Snow, 20 February 2024 |
We started back at the Swann Oyster House in late February, before the equinox ushered in the spring. Over the past 40 some years that I’ve worked in Maryland I can’t remember a late winter so mild that we could get started in the field. And yes, I know that the professional crews are out all winter working, but this is a long term research project so we run on a different schedule that generally starts in late March. There was snow on the ground at UMBC in Catonsville, Maryland on February 20th, yet 6 days later we were in the field in Port Tobacco, Maryland cleaning up the site and getting ready to extend the units at the Swann Oyster House.
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Ned Edelen, Mary Vargo, and Elsie Picyk on opening day, 26 February |
By early March we’d opened a few more units and we were starting to find features. If you look at the photograph below, there is a dark squarish stain showing up on the floor of the unit next to the profile wall (the wall with the chalk board on it). Stains like these are often the result of human activity, such as a hole dug to put a post in or a stain left by the rotting post (known as the post mold). Or they are perhaps associated with a pit or a hearth. We were hoping to find these as the documentary record told us that there was a large garden and stable associated with the house in the late eighteenth century and further, that James Swann owned two horses when he died in 1871. We hoped to find at least the stable, which I thought was likely to be more of a pole barn type structure than something with a stone foundation like the house.
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The edge of a possible Post Mold along the west wall of Unit 5 |
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| Reproduced from Barbara H. Magid and Bernard K. Means. In the Philadelphia Style: The Pottery of Henry Piercy. Ceramics in America 2003. Chipstone Foundation. Figure 36. https://www.chipstone.org/article.php/77/Ceramics-in-America-2003/In-the-Philadelphia-Style:-The-Pottery-of-Henry-Piercy |
In mid-March we began to find post molds with very faint post holes around them. The clay was reddish yellow on the surface, which was just barely visible against the surrounding yellow silty clay at the base of the plow zone. In the photo below you can see two of the dark circular post mold stains (where the post once stood) next to a vertical dark stain, which turned out to be a place where the plow cut deeper into the yellow sub soil. We were excited by this as the pipkin leg came from this unit and we hoped that they were part of an earlier post-in-ground building, possibly from the founding of Port Tobacco in 1729.
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Two Post Holes - one next to the trowel and the other by the chalk board The linear line was a plow scar. The reddish soil is on the left by the trowel handle |
A post-in-ground structure doesn’t have a stone or brick foundation. It is built by placing upright posts into the earth with the sills and sides attached – much like the Amish still raise their barns. The houses had chimneys made of wood and lined with daub or bricks, although sometimes the entire chimney would be built of brick (an example of one with Dutch yellow bricks was excavated in Anne Arundel County some 30 years ago). Sometimes, as with the eighteenth-century house excavated a few year ago at Oliver’s Crossing, the base would be made of locally available stone found in nearby stream beds. An example of an early Chesapeake house is in the illustration below.
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Drawing by Cary Carson and Chinh Hoang Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies. Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 16, No 1, page 144, 1981 |
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Monday mornings in March and April often started like this! But April Showers bring May flowers, or so the saying goes. 25 March 2024 |
Once pumped out we were back
at work!
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Left to Right: Mimi Gray, Denise Chesledine, Pat Vasquez, Elsie Picyk, and Carol Cowhead. 25 March 2024 |
We took a little break on April 8th to view the eclipse. The crew worked until 2 PM then settled down with our eclipse glasses and plates of Oreo Cheese Cake to celebrate! We had a wonderful time watching the sun slowly disappear and experiencing the drop in temperature and a slightly darker day (not quite what you get at totality). This was great way to experience the cosmos together!
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The "Eclipse Gang" Left to Right: Gary and Mary Vargo, CLaudia Khun, Denise Cheseldine, Elsie Picyk, Linda Talley, and me. I'm wearing my 2017 Eclipse shirt as I was lucky enough to see totality in Illinois |
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The Eclipse from our viewing point at the Swann Oyster House. Photo by Tim Doyle |
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The Dyson Farmily Plot at Shiloh Cemetery 10 April 2024 |
As May progressed we opened
more areas of the site and began to find more eighteenth-century artifacts in
the plow zone, although the post hole/mold combinations became elusive. While
the wood associated with the posts and the house is long gone, nails used in
the construction of the house are often left behind. Steve came out with his
metal detector in June and marked the locations of wrought nails. Wrought nails
were made by hand by blacksmiths and were used from the Medieval Period in
Europe into the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century in Britain and her
colonies. They were gradually replaced between 1790 and 1810 by the
introduction of machine cut nails that could be factory-made and in larger
quantities and that cost less. We marked the locations of Steve’s finds and are
using this data to continue to guide our excavations and search for the house.
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Left to Right: Steve Lohr, Mary Vargo in the white hat behind Heather (who is bending over), Linda Talley (fresh from church), and Carol Cowherd 2 June 2024 |
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Bottle Seal found in June |
While Steve was making his
survey, one of the metal detector hits not only turned up a nail, but it also produced
a bottle seal. Bottle seals were placed on the bottle after its manufacture and
often had the initials of the bottle’s owner embossed on them. You didn’t go to
a liquor store to buy a bottle of whiskey, you either had it shipped to you
from Britain or Scotland in your very own initialed bottle or you went to the
local tavern and purchased a drink or refilled your bottle. The bottle seal
found this summer was partial and has the initials “TI” on it – the first
initial is missing. IF, and this is
not a for certain thing, if the first initial is an “S” and the “I” is an
archaic form of “J” then we could possibly have Saint Thomas Jenifer. The Jenifer
family, who lived at “Coates Retirement” outside of Port Tobacco, was active in
Charles County politics through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They
would have been in town for business and court and certainly stopped at the
taverns in the town.
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Volunteers Working in the Expanded Excavation Area in June 2024 |
Late June brought the Charles
County Historic Preservation Commission’s Preservation Awards Ceremony and this
year CCASM was presented with a Preservation Service Award for all their hard
work over the last 15 years in Charles County! Just a short list of their achievements includes all of CCASM’s volunteer hours at Port Tobacco over a
decade and a half, their work on other projects with me –excavation at Rich
Hill, the Simpkin Coatback house in Dentsville, and a few other smaller sites;
the grant work out at Maxwell Hall; archaeology displays at the local libraries;
outreach and information tables at fairs, Port Tobacco Market Days, and the Maxwell
Hall Colonial Faire; and hours and hours of lab work – not to mention all the
hours that they donated to Jim Gibb’s work at Port Tobacco and other sites
before I arrived in 2014. And that’s just the short list.
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Members of CCASM Recieving the 2024 Preservation Service Award Left to right: Ned Edelen, Denise and Joe Chesledine, Me in the hat, Evie Lavorgna, Carol Cowherd, Elsie Picyk, Claudia Kuhn, and Linda and Doug Talley I had the honor of presenting the Award to the group. 27 June 2024 |
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Left to Right: Carol, Claudia, and Linda One of our last days in the field before the heat got horrid. 1 July 2024 |
Late June also ushered in the
high temps (it was really hot at the awards ceremony) and although we managed to get back out on the site for a short time
around the fourth of July and a few days later in the month, most of our time
was spent in the lab processing the artifacts we recovered during the spring.
Our high school grads and college students this summer joinned us in the field and in the lab. They were Kyle Swann, Jayden Pefley, and Noah Proctor. All of whom are members of the Piscataway Conoy tribe and who are. according to their oral family history, also a part of the Swann family that owned the Oyster House during the nineteenth century - how cool is that? Kyle and Noah dug through some of the hottest days out in the field as we searched for the elusive post holes and molds and the possible building that stood behind the Swann Oyster House. But the high temps of close to 100 degrees finally drove us out of the field and into the lab.
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Left to Right: Kyle Swann and Jayden Pefley working in the air conditioned lab 5 August 2024 |
Now that fall is around the corner, we’ll be back in the field at Port Tobacco. Check the blog for updates as the fall season progresses! We will have a Public Archaeology Day on Saturday and Sunday, September 14th and 15th. Please join us from 11 AM to 3PM to visit or volunteer. If you plan to volunteer, please contact me so I know you’re coming and I can send you any information you might need. Reade@charlescountymd.gov.
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The site waiting for us to come back now that the weather is (hopefully) cooler. |
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