Lives and Legacies

Tag: Washington house

  • “We encampt here on the banks of the Rappahannock. Oh, it is beautiful country.”

    A Personal Look At Civil War Soldiers As Told Through Artifacts

    Ferry Farm is most well-known as the Boyhood home of George Washington. While our primary emphasis of interpretation and research has focused on young George and his family’s life on this farm, Ferry Farm has many other stories to tell. The American Civil War had a major impact on the Ferry Farm community, changing both the landscape and the lives of those who lived here. This blog will look at how our archaeological efforts have brought to light artifacts that reflect the experiences of the soldiers that were stationed on the “old Washington Farm.”   

    Washington House at Ferry Farm
    “The Old Mansion of the Washington Family” (1833) by John Gadsby Chapman shows the foundation stones of the house where George grew up at Ferry Farm and trees along the riverbank.

    The Washington house and its outbuildings gradually fell into disrepair until by the mid-1830s there was no trace of them on the landscape. But the soldiers still knew the significance of the site. In April 1862, the Civil War came full force to Fredericksburg and to Ferry Farm. Federal Forces took over and occupied the City of Fredericksburg behind the retreating Confederate Army.  Encampments and gun emplacements were established all along our side of the river and throughout Stafford County as the army set about maintaining control of the city across the river. Engineers were set to the task of rebuilding the railroad bridge and erecting pontoon bridges, including one at the end of Ferry Road.

    Looking over Fredericksburg by Alfred R. Waud

    This spring deployment and the military occupation of Ferry Farm was relatively quiet and uneventful. There is no evidence of a large, formal camp at Ferry Farm, but soldiers were stationed here to protect one of the pontoon bridges that ran from the bottom land of Ferry Farm across to the city of Fredericksburg. In August of 1862, the army suddenly retreated from the city and the surrounding countryside to defend Washington, D.C.

    In November of the same year, the full force of the Union Army returned to Stafford County in preparation for the retaking of Fredericksburg and their expected march to take over Richmond. Instead, the Federals suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December and retreated to the north side of the river for winter camp. Now, Ferry Farm was being used more actively as a staging ground for multiple troop movements, bivouacs for soldiers guarding the pontoon bridges, and as a defensive line for the Federal troops.

      A defensive trench, or rifle pit, with an adjoining berm to protect soldiers from gunfire originating on the Fredericksburg side of the river, was dug across the edge of the upper river terrace, stretching north-south from the edge of the stream gully through the remains of the Washington house. A small extension on the south end of the trench was dug out to connect it to the now-exposed cellar.

    Artifacts found within the cellar trench fill reflect the extensive use of the house ruins by soldiers during both occupations. In the spring and summer, they used the farmhouse as their headquarters, writing on the plaster walls and leaving graffiti in pencil and charcoal on hundreds of plaster fragments that have been excavated and preserved.

    Plaster fragments with graffiti

    Various artifacts were abandoned when they left, including canteens, bullets, gun parts, and writing tools. But this blog isn’t about buttons, bullets, and buckles. It’s about the items the soldiers found more dear. Objects they made or relied on for small comforts.

    So, on a more personal level, what was everyday life like for the Union soldiers stationed here during the Civil War? When they weren’t directly experiencing the brutal and intense combat fighting on the front, it was a routine-filled life of constant drilling, standing watches, maintaining equipment, and finding imaginative ways to entertain themselves in the camps. But camp life had its own struggles and hardships. Poor shelter, food, and hygiene, along with low immunity rates to communicable diseases, all contributed to high rates of sickness and disease. Add to that boredom and homesickness, and camp life was a private’s first test of survival.

    It was very important for the soldiers to recognize that they were standing on the very ground that their hero, George Washington, once stood on. Those sentiments were expressed in a speech by Private Edwin Jones of the 6th Wisconsin when he said, “We are assembled on sacred soil…It was while living on this plantation, under the direction and blessed with the teaching of a noble mother, that George Washington learned those lessons…fitting him for leadership in war and peace, to lay the foundation of the mighty Nation that we today are fighting to preserve.”

    On a more personal note, we know soldiers spent a lot of idle time playing games among themselves. Dice, card games, chess, checkers, and gambling were all very popular, and remnants of these activities are found on all Civil War sites. At Ferry Farm, we have a collection of gaming pieces, including this bone die and a gaming piece crafted from a Minié ball, which could have been used to play chess, checkers, or as markers in a game of chance.

    Bone die, one of the many gaming pieces uncovered
    Gaming pieces crafted from a Minié ball

    And we can’t forget about the importance of music in camp life. Music was a common and welcome pastime activity for troops. Fiddles, guitars, fifes, harmonicas, and accordions all came out at night to entertain the soldiers who relished listening to songs about home and the worries of war. Jaw harps were inexpensive and easily portable, which made them very popular with soldiers. Our jaw harps, one of which was recovered from the civil war trench, is of the style known as a Gloucester type, one of the most common designs in America during Colonial times and after the Revolution.

    “Gloucester type” jaw harp

                Nothing is normal about wartime. Many people were forced to improvise, and it’s very hard to determine why a soldier placed four unfired Minié balls in this tin can, which was revealed through X-ray. Did he lose his ammo case? Was it just idle behavior? Were these bullets saved to be turned into gaming pieces? This is the type of artifact that raises more questions than answers.

    A tin can filled with four unfired Minié balls,
    X-Ray of tin can with four unfired Minié balls

    Literacy – Ink Bottle/Pen nib:

    Literacy among Civil War soldiers was very high, and much of what we know about daily camp life comes from the letters written and received by the soldiers themselves. Letter-writing to loved ones at home allowed the soldier to keep up with local news, forward monetary and business instructions to those left running the household or farm, and relay war news to their family.

                A complete ink bottle and pen nib recovered from the site evidences the desire for correspondence, both official and personal. The ink bottle itself was found in the Bray cellar hole, which the Union soldiers used as a defensive dugout to avoid Confederate sharp shooters. We can just picture a group of soldiers huddled down inside the cellar, building a small campfire to stay warm, and writing letters home to their families. Was it a hasty departure that left this bottle in the cellar, or perhaps the owner expected to return but didn’t. As archaeologists, we can’t answer all these questions, but we know it was used during the Civil War by a Union soldier and was found in a location many soldiers never wanted to be stuck in.

    This particular ink bottle is an ‘umbrella’ shape, one of the most ubiquitous ink bottle forms from this era. The bottle was typically meant for single use and would have been made in one of the numerous American glasshouses present during the 19th century. It was then filled with ink, affixed with a label, and marketed for single use.

    “umbrella” shaped ink bottle and small pen nib

    This small pen nib is stamped with a maker’s mark and style name. The Esterbrook Company started making nibs, including the “Relief” style, in 1858 in Camden, New Jersey, and became one of the largest manufacturers of this product in the US. The nib was part of a dip pen, which consisted of a handle made of various materials and the replaceable nib.

    The first evidence of self-care in the trenches takes the form of a small double-sided bone comb. Combs were made from an assortment of materials, including bone, ivory, gutta perch, and steel, and were used for grooming the moustache and hair. But their fine teeth were also handy in capturing the pesky lice that were endemic to camp life among men marching and living together in close quarters. This comb would have been an essential component of any soldier’s personal kit.

    small double-sided bone comb

    Our second evidence of self-care is this intriguing bottle. It is not so much interesting because of what it is – it’s a very common medicine style bottle for the mid-19th century– but rather what’s inside. Clearly visible within the bottle is a hard black substance, and for years, we’ve wondered what the substance may be.

    Mercury bottle, mercury was used for a variety of medicinal reasons at the time

    So we chipped off a little fragment of the substance and sent it to Ruth Ann Armitage, our chemist friend at Eastern Michigan University. The sample was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy to map out specifically what elements were present in the sample. Our sample was also run through DART (direct in real time) mass spectrometry. This technique is good at detecting organic components within a substance.

                Almost immediately, Dr Armitage responded, and we weren’t disappointed: “Did you know there’s mercury in this?”  Nope, we did not.

    However, this discovery was not too surprising given the use of mercury in many medicines for thousands of years. Nowadays, it’s common knowledge that you shouldn’t drink mercury…or touch it…or inhale it, but for a long time, mercury was seen as a potent healing metal, and it was readily rubbed on skin, consumed, and vaporized for immediate effect on the lungs.

    And while all these treatments using mercury did little to address the body’s underlying medical problem, mercury did cause an immediate bodily response, which convinced people it was working to cure their ailments. When applied topically, it burned. When introduced into the body, it caused a person to sweat, salivate, and have diarrhea. The mucous membranes also went into overdrive, leading many to believe that the bad stuff in your system making you sick was being purged by the mercury. The reality, of course, was that the body was trying desperately to rid itself of poison.

    So, if the residue inside our bottle was medicine, what was its exact formula? All we can say at this point is that it was mercury-based and that it could have been in either liquid or pill form. Common Civil War-era uses for mercury-based medicines were for treating skin sores and lacerations, internal and external parasite infections, syphilis, and constipation, to name but a few. On a side note, an almost identical bottle also containing mercury was found across the river in Fredericksburg at a site that was well known to be a Union field hospital. It was found in a knapsack discarded in a trench that included amputated limbs.

    Lastly, we’d like to highlight one of our favorite artifacts, a tiny hatchet about two and a half inches long, recovered from the bottom of the Civil War trench. For such a diminutive object, it speaks quite loudly to our local history in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Initially, earlier archaeologists at Ferry Farm assumed it was a pewter toy souvenir given out or sold in 1932, when our country and Fredericksburg celebrated the 200th anniversary of George’s birth. Indeed, cheap pewter toys were very popular during this time period.

    Lead toy hatchet found in Civil War-era trench with traces of tin and nickel.
    Lead toy hatchet found in Civil War-era trench with traces of tin and nickel.

    A recent reexamination of all the artifacts from the context where the hatchet was found revealed that nothing from that stratum had any 20th-century artifacts in it, nor did the two strata above it. In fact, the youngest artifacts from these strata were all mid-19th century. Additionally, although the archaeologists who excavated the hatchet didn’t know it at the time, the excavation unit from which the hatchet came sat right inside the Civil War-era trench.

    This revelation shut the door on our ‘it’s a 20th-century souvenir’ narrative but opened the door to an even cooler one.  A close examination of the hatchet showed that it didn’t have mold seams, which are always present on cast pewter toys. Furthermore, for some reason, it had one smooth side and one textured side, leading us to believe that it was handmade, not machine-cast. This was supported by a thorough internet search to find an identical toy hatchet, which came up empty, further supporting our new theory that this piece was a one of a kind. The textured side resembled the grain of wood, so we surmised it had been cast in a simple hand-carved wooden mold. All of these clues, combined with its location within a Civil War trench, made us suspect that the hatchet was crafted by a soldier, likely from a lead Minié ball. The hatchet is likely ‘trench art’, which is defined as objects of art either made by soldiers, POWs, or by civilians to create mementos of the war experience.

    To further support our identification of the hatchet as trench art, we took the artifact to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, where Katherine Ridgeway analyzed it using XRF, or X-ray fluorescence analysis. This non-destructive technique determines the composition of metal. We also brought along a few Minié balls recovered from the same unit for comparison. It turned out that what we thought was a pewter hatchet was actually a lead hatchet with a similar compositional profile to Minié balls, which are mostly lead with trace amounts of other metals such as tin and nickel.

    One can just imagine a bored Union soldier whittling the mold and then melting down some of his bullets to pour into it. He likely chose the hatchet form because of the famous cherry tree story, in which young George Washington owned up to hacking his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet by proclaiming, ‘I cannot tell a lie.’ The soldier would have been well-versed in the Washington cherry tree myth at Ferry Farm, created by Mason Locke Weems in his first biography of Washington, published in 1800. By the 1860s, the story was nationally known. Additionally, letters Union soldiers wrote while encamped at Ferry Farm indicate they knew the site’s connection to Washington. They even went so far as to send home cherry seeds for their families.

    Grant Wood — Parson Weems’ Fable (1939)

    While the identification of the hatchet is now secured, we have so many more questions. Who was this soldier? How many hatchets did he make, and why did this one come to be left behind in his trench? Was it a souvenir for himself, or did he send one home to his family, or share with fellow soldiers?  Did he survive the war? Unfortunately, these are mysteries that will likely never be solved, but that make for great pondering.

    Mara Kaktins, Archaeologist and Lab Manager

    Judy Jobrack, Archaeology Co-Field Director

  • Making our mark…on the laundry

    18th-century household linen management and its 21st-century historic house equivalent

    For the modern historic house museum collections staff, the care and cleaning of our spaces and objects are some of the most important tasks we do.  Proper dusting and routine cleaning helps preserve historic objects, vacuuming floors and wiping down woodwork help to maintain our historic interiors, and rotation of sensitive works help to prolong their life through limited light exposure and other environmental impacts.

    In January and February each year, when the Historic Kenmore and Ferry Farm sites are typically closed to the public, the curatorial staff is able to access the spaces to conduct inventories and condition assessments of objects…and to clean. Spring cleaning at the Washington House this year involved quite a bit of teamwork between our curatorial and buildings & grounds staff—fresh coats of whitewash went up on high-traffic areas of this historic recreation, and the wooden floors were vacuumed, spot-cleaned, and mopped to remove built-up dirt from tours and other activities.

    Low-post bedstead in the Hall Back Room piled high with reproduction bedding.

    Maintaining the bedsteads of the Washington House is an ongoing task for our interpretive staff, as they tidy and straighten the sheets and pillows that are moved about by visitors (something we encourage and celebrate!) during their immersive tour experiences.  This year, as we (the curatorial staff) conducted our spring-cleaning routine, we tightened the bedstead ropes and refreshed the bedding to prep the house for another busy year.  But as we went about conducting our room-by-room inventories and pulling bedding out for washing or airing, we uncovered an issue: many of our modern museum object labels for the sheets and pillowcases had become unreadable.

    White linen reproduction bedsheet with its twill tape label (sans number).

    Marking textiles in a museum collection typically entails a small length of twill (woven cloth) tape, a handwritten or applied object number, and small stitches to attach the tape to the textile object.  But for our reproduction bed linens on the bedsteads of the Washington House, these labels no longer were readable due to laundering—the “permanent” number used just didn’t last.  So what are our options?

    As we like to do, we turned to the past for an understanding of what might be a better, but still historically accurate method for marking our linens.  One such resource we turned to was cookery and household books of the period.  The Workwoman’s Guide, for example, includes a number of receipts (or instructions) for making marking ink as well as detailed instructions for marking household linens with thread.  In marking of linens, according to the author (A Lady), the textile would be marked with either the husband’s initials or the wife’s first name along with husbands initials, followed by an abbreviation of the type of article, and finally by the number and a date marker (last two digits of the year, for instance). 

    Receipt for “Permanent Ink for Marking Linen.” from The workwoman’s guide : containing instructions to the inexperienced in cutting out and completing those articles of wearing apparel, &c. which are usually made at home : also, explanations on upholstery, straw- platting, bonnet-making, knitting, &c. By A Lady (1838) via Smithsonian Libraries and Archives on Archive.org

    Existing household linens in museum collections and references in the written record indicate that some were in fact marked with numbers or initials/names (or both) to enable the items to be tracked and inventoried, although the exact combination of numbers and letters seem to vary, likely based on a complexities of the household and its linen inventory. The probate inventory taken after Augustine Washington’s death in 1743 records a variety of household textiles at Ferry Farm, including tablecloths, napkins, pillowcases, sheets, and towels.  The appraisers, however, make no note of whether these textiles were marked in any way (just noting materials or other descriptors and quantity). 

    Excerpt of 1743 probate inventory of Augustine Washington listing “Linnen,” including 6 Diaper Table Cloths, 10 Napkins, 6 pr Sheets, 10 White Linnen Napkins, 11 pr Pillow Cases, 8 Towells, 5 pr White Sheets, 5 pr brown Do. [Sheets], 6 pr Pillow Cases, 12 Towels, 7 Table Cloths, 11 Old Napkins, and 12 Oznabs Napkins. Inventory submitted 1 July 1743 to King George County court.

    The archaeological record of Ferry Farm includes a number of implements related to sewing, as touched upon in past blog posts such as this one or this one about thimbles.  Our own museum collections house a few 18th or early 19th century sheets or other household linens, some of which have been marked in ink or stitching with (unidentified) owners’ initials/names and dates, much in keeping with the instructions outlined in period references such as The Workwoman’s Guide and other household manuals.

    Sample layout and makeup of marks to include owner’s initials, item identification, number, and date. Excerpt from The workwoman’s guide (1838) via Smithsonian Libraries and Archives on Archive.org

    So, for our modern museum inventory management purposes, I think we’ll be skipping the caustic nitrate of silver or crunchy cochineal beetles for coloring and stick to the needle and thread method of marking our reproduction bedding and other textiles.  As suggested by A Lady, the Washington House marks will include both Mary and Augustine Washington’s initials along with notations of item type (such as WS for the five pairs of White Sheets listed in the 1743 inventory) and date of creation (for many of these reproduction linens, that would be 2018 or 2019).  I’ll be getting my needle and thread ready so that next year’s inventory and spring cleaning will hopefully be easy-breezy.

    Gretchen Goodell Pendleton

    Aldrich Director of Curatorial Operations

  • That’s A Wrap! Ferry Farm’s Dig Season Recap

    October just happens to be Virginia Archaeology Month, and what better way to celebrate than to recap this summer’s excavation at George Washington’s Boyhood Home at Ferry Farm.

    You might remember from our dig preview, that this year’s dig (FF-44) focused on the continued exploration of the 18th-century kitchen site located just northeast of the main house. In 2023, our limited investigations uncovered just a small section of the kitchen’s stone foundation and cellar, giving us a sneak preview of the conditions and parameters of future site work. Armed with this knowledge, our aims this year were to uncover more of the original foundation walls of the kitchen cellar, to uncover additional architectural evidence of the kitchen outbuilding, and explore the surrounding landscape for features. So, did we do it?

    Location of the 18th century kitchen foundation in relation to two later farmhouses dating to 1876 and 1914. 

    We did! But before we get to the fun discoveries, let’s go over how we got there. As far as sites go here at Ferry Farm, this one has been through a lot. Not only did the original 16’ by 16’ kitchen building burn and collapse in on itself in the middle of the 18th century, but it also had two subsequent farmhouses built on top of it that were either moved, damaged in a fire, or demolished all within the last 150 years. A previous archaeology project on the site introduced another element of complexity in understanding the depositional sequence of fills on the earlier 18th-century site, which had obviously been heavily disturbed by all these later events.

    All this led to an interesting excavation. Since a significant portion of the site had previously been excavated in the 1990s, a sizable amount of our site time was spent re-excavating backfilled archaeology units with the purpose of exposing unexcavated layers around the site. Not only would these unexcavated layers allow us to gather new data, but it would also give us the opportunity to better understand the findings as recorded in the earlier reports.

    With the help of our wonderful field school students and interns, we opened a total of twenty-seven 5’x5’ units across the kitchen site. Sifting through the dirt, hundreds of artifacts were found dating to all occupations of Ferry Farm. Super cool finds that date to the 18th-century period of use for the kitchen included tobacco pipe fragments, wine bottle sherds, and a variety of ceramics, including English stoneware, Chinese porcelain, and a German Westerwald ‘GR’ sherd. The prehistoric Native American occupations of the site were represented by an unusually high number of projectile points found (8 and counting!), dating to both the Early Archaic (8000 BC – 6500 BC) and Early Woodland (1100 BC – 500 BC) periods.  Civil War bullets came up in our screens, of course, as did 20th-century plastic, tools, toys, and bottle caps.

    But when it comes to finds, our most exciting discovery did not turn up in our sifting screens.  In fact, it was discovering that the western foundation wall of the kitchen cellar, thought to have been demolished, still survived!  During the 1990s excavations, the archaeologists did not see this portion of the stone foundation and assumed the construction of the 1914 Colbert house had destroyed it. Fortunately for us, it was hiding under a 20th century utility pipe and trench and lay directly adjacent to the Colbert concrete foundation. Now we have all four foundation walls that we hope to fully uncover next year.

    Exposed south and west stone walls of the colonial kitchen lie adjacent to and just outside of the 1914 concrete foundation wall.  
    Judy Jobrack cleaning the newly exposed west wall
    Abbie Wood cleaning the south wall of the kitchen
    West wall of colonial kitchen that was hiding under the pipe trench

    Our excavation units surrounding the kitchen foundation have not, as of yet, exposed additional building features associated with the kitchen outbuilding, such as foundations or fireplaces. That search will continue next year as we continue taking those units down and expanding our site area. Features exposed in the 1990s dig, but not excavated by them or us, such as possible post holes and trash middens, also await our return in 2025, when we plan on finishing their excavation.

    Each year’s excavation is built on the work accomplished in the previous years.  With the incredible amount of work done this past summer of exposing the original kitchen foundation, as well as the later farmhouse foundations, removing old fill, and opening up the adjacent landscape, we are looking forward to expanding our investigations of the kitchen site next year.  Stay tuned as we unravel the mysteries that are here at Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home.

    Danielle Arens and Judy Jobrack

    GWF Archaeology Field Directors

  • Expanding Ferry Farm:  Preparing For The Long Winter In The Cellar House

    If you have visited Ferry Farm recently or follow us on social media, you may have noticed the construction of two buildings near the Washington House. These new structures represent those that stood in these spots during George Washington’s time and were constructed using 18th-century methods. Identified through archaeology, their reconstructions allow us to tell better the stories of the people who lived and worked at Ferry Farm. We have previously blogged about the Quarter, a building for housing enslaved individuals owned by the Washingtons.  For this blog, we will look at an integral structure located behind the Washington dwelling: the Cellar House.

    The Cellar House

    What is a cellar house, you may ask?  While explaining it to my 7-year-old son, I told him it is neither a cellar nor a house (by modern standards).  At this point, he threw up his arms and gave me up for an imbecilic parent.  However, this structure was extremely important for large farms in the 18th century.  Picture a simple timber and daub (fancy word for hardened clay) building with four walls, one door, high rafters, no windows, and a three-foot-deep pit beneath its floorboards.  It is not fancy or decorative by any standards, yet this building holds preserved food that feeds dozens of people at Ferry Farm during seasons when fresh food is unavailable. 

    Location of the Cellar House on the Ferry Farm property

    Let’s do a brief overview of food preservation during the Washington time period since it has already been touched on in previous blogs. Keeping food from going bad varies from region to region, depending on your climate (combinations of cold, wet, dry, or hot).  The hot and humid months in Virginia posed quite a problem for colonists.  These conditions do not lend themselves to easy food preservation.  Plainly speaking, the East Coast Southern States drew the short straw when it came to keeping food consumable in the long term.  As they say, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” and Virginians had a wide variety of cards in their deck for keeping food from rotting.  Salt, sugar, wood ash, alcohol, vinegar (which was formerly alcohol), and other substances were utilized along with methods including smoking, fermenting, and dehydrating.  However, even the best food preservation methods are useless if the resulting food is not stored correctly. 

    This simple brick structure is possibly a unique example of a decorated outbuilding built solely to serve as a root cellar on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Source: The Virginia Department of Historic Resources

    The cellar house could store many different types of foods and beverages, depending on where one kept them in the building.  The rafters were ideal for cured meats such as hams, keeping them high and dry.  Hooks on the walls held bunches of drying herbs, garlic, and onions.  The shelves were perfect for baskets and small crocks of food, while the floor was sturdy for storing large casks or jugs of ale and cider, sacks of grain, and bushels of hardy vegetables and fruits. The pit beneath the floorboards, a glorified ‘cellar,’ was a few degrees cooler in the hot months and a few degrees warmer during the cold season.  However, the difference between spoilage and edibility could hinge on maybe 10 degrees, making the subfloor pit essential for colonists who needed to keep some food cooler in summer but warmer (not freezing solid) in winter. Basically, the role the cellar house played varied by the seasons as a revolving door of foods came and went. 

    Inside of Cellar House
    Inside of Cellar House

    When archaeologists at Ferry Farm excavated the area underneath and around where the cellar house would have been, we found artifacts indicative of such a structure.  Namely, very few items would have been found inside and around a dwelling, such as tea and tablewares, byproducts of meals, and valuable personal items.  Large storage vessels, metal hooks for hanging food, and wrought nails and daub used to build the structure dominate the cellar house artifacts.  The only notable personal items recovered were fragments of smoking pipes.  That’s right, the smoke break was a thing even among enslaved workers stacking food inside the cellar house. 

    Ceramics from the Cellar House
    Faunal finds from the Cellar House
    Glass finds from the Cellar House

    The cellar house is currently fully constructed, but we have yet to populate it with all of the storage vessels, food, smoking pipes, and other accouterments of a storage building.  Eventually, visitors will be able to look into this building and take a trip back to the mid-eighteenth century with crocks, jugs, bottles, sacks, barrels, and baskets full of food and drink.  All of which will be informed by the historic records and the artifacts recovered by our archaeologists, as with all the reconstructed buildings at Ferry Farm.  Then, perhaps when I show the building to my son, he’ll see its importance: part pantry, part colonial refrigerator, and all cellar house. 

    Mara Kaktins

    Archaeologist & Lab Manager

  • Expanding Ferry Farm: The Quarter

    If you have visited Ferry Farm recently or follow us on social media, you may have noticed the construction of two buildings near the Washington House. These new structures represent ones that stood in these spots during George Washington’s time. Identified through archaeology, their reconstructions allow us to better tell the stories of the people who lived and worked at Ferry Farm. For this blog, we will look at the structure adjacent to the Washington House along the embankment overlooking the Rappahannock: The Quarter.

    What’s in a Name?

                First, we need to define what we mean when we call the structure “the Quarter.” Regarding enslaved life, the term “quarter” can refer to several different situations. Generally, it refers to a structure that housed enslaved individuals with “quarter,” equating to a living space or personal quarters. The term has nothing to do with the number and makeup of the occupants or the appearance of the building. The other use for the term refers to a group of enslaved people. Augustine Washington’s probate inventory lists seven enslaved people at Ferry Farm’s “satellite quarter” (Fig. 1). In this use, it does not refer to a single physical structure but rather a group of people and their housing unit that moved around. “The Quarter” uses the term for a single structure, identified through archaeology, that housed an enslaved family in the heart of the Ferry Farm plantation.  

    Figure 1: Section of Augustine’s probate inventory listing individuals at the satellite “quarter”

    Enslaved Housing

                Living conditions varied widely across the Mid-Atlantic and even within a single plantation. Customarily, enslaved people lived where they worked. Work yard structures included living quarters above the workspace while the fields had structures akin to dormitories that housed people divided by biological sex. In certain cases, independent structures may have served as housing for single family units (Fig. 2). Those that lived within these spaces generally held high ranking positions within the hierarchy established by enslavers. Housing generally stood outside public view and in areas convenient to the work undertaken by the inhabitants. Quarters within sight of the public served as status symbols for the gentry.

    Figure 2: 1860 engraving depicting single quarters in South Carolina (Slavery Images)

                Identifying quarters today largely comes from historic records, oral history, archaeology, and architectural features. All of this can help establish a range of appearances for such structures. When a building no longer remains standing, these observations can be compared to artifacts uncovered at the site to determine its identity. Sub-floor storage pits, often located near hearths, serve as key architectural identifiers, while artifacts that reflect African diaspora culture, outdated items, and evidence of labor help pinpoint the identities of the inhabitants. Quarters served as the only personal spaces allotted to enslaved people, so any artifacts recovered can speak to their personal identities rather than those defined by Virginia colonials.

    Archaeological Evidence

                The excavation of the Quarter occurred in 2003, and research in successive years helped to identify its role and understand the lives of its inhabitants.

    • Architecture: When excavated, little remained of the Quarter, but the architectural elements present and absent provided enough information to understand its appearance. Archaeologists recovered small quantities of Aquia sandstone around the quarter indicating it may have had a light stone foundation and hearth. The main impact it had on the ground surface occurred through the creation of a sub-floor pit. These pits frequently appeared in quarters and served as storage areas for the occupants’ personal effects. Unfortunately, a tree later intruded a portion of the pit and the surrounding area thus making it difficult to study (Fig. 3). Other architectural elements included an abundance of nails and an absence of window glass (Fig. 4). This indicates the building had clapboard siding and likely shuttered windows in place of glass ones.
    Figure 3: Quarter Excavation Site
    Figure 4: Nail distribution around Quarter
    • Tableware (Fig. 5): Within the eighteenth-century contexts, we recovered many ceramics and utensils of European origin. White-salt glazed stoneware dishes and dog-nosed spoons represent styles in decline by the 1740s. This indicates that the enslaved occupants either received hand-me-downs from the Washingtons, a common practice, or purchased used items in the local market. A colonoware bowl served as an exception. A local ceramic type attributed to free and enslaved black communities, colonoware production mixed African ceramic techniques with European vessel forms.
    Figure 5: Tableware (L-R white salt glazed stoneware, dog-nosed spoon handle, colonoware bowl, table knives)
    • Small Finds (Fig. 6): Analysis of the artifacts revealed the personal effects of the occupants, their possible identities, and the labor they carried out. Wig curlers appear frequently throughout Ferry Farm, but the recovery of several at the Quarter indicates that the individual(s) tasked with maintaining the Washington wigs may have lived within. Sewing implements, such as thimbles, reflect labor carried out by enslaved women and girls either for the Washingtons or for themselves. A common practice in colonial Virginia saw each enslaved person receive a ration of cloth from which they fashioned their own clothing. Straight pins further indicate the presence of female occupants as these pins held their garments, such as bed gowns, together. Both genders used the numerous tobacco pipes recovered. The fishhook speaks to an entirely personal activity,  as enslaved communities often supplemented their food rations by fishing. The pierced coin serves as the artifact most indicative of enslaved culture. Piercing a coin allowed the owner to keep it on their person as a form of adornment. Such coins often served as talismans, though they could re-enter the economic world as needed.
    Figure 6: Small Finds (L-R mirrored pierced coin, fishhook, wig curlers, thimble, straight pins, tobacco pipe fragments)
    • Diet (Fig. 7): Faunal remains found at the Quarter supplement the information provided by the fishhook. As expected, we identified several fish species including types of perch, catfish, and sunfish which lived in the Rappahannock at that time. Other animals included cattle, chickens, pigs, opossum, and shellfish, such as oysters. This mix of domestic and wild species indicates that the Quarter’s occupants supplemented the rations supplied by the Washingtons. The enslaved commonly achieved this by maintaining small gardens and raising chickens, hunting, fishing, and foraging. While we did not recover any plant remains, those consumed by the inhabitants likely reflected a similar mix of wild and domestic species.
    Figure 7: Faunal (L-R Oyster shells, eggshells under microscope, fish scales/bones under microscope, various mammal bones)

    Reconstruction and Interpretation

                The reconstruction of the Quarter combined our archaeological evidence with the historic knowledge of enslaved housing (Fig. 8). The finished Quarter measures 16’x14’ which aligns with standard measurements for single-family quarters. From our archaeology, it has clapboard siding, sliding shutters in place of glass windows, a subfloor pit, and sandstone hearth. Information on contemporary quarters led to the inclusion of a loft and a daub lined wood chimney. Architects used eighteenth-century techniques to reconstruct the building.

    Figure 8: The Quarter, various views

                From our findings, we concluded that the quarter housed a single family. At least one of these individuals held a high-ranking position within the labor hierarchy allotted these living arrangements (Fig. 9). The structure’s proximity to the Washington House and work yard indicates the occupants worked within these spaces. The position on the bluff overlooking the Rappahannock meant that this quarter, unlike others, lay in view of the public.  “The prominent placement of this structure on the landscape may mean that it was used to reinforce Washington’s prominent social standing in colonial Virginia.”     

    Figure 9: Portion of Augustine’s probate inventory listing individuals at Ferry Farm; some may have called the Quarter home

    The Quarter will open to visitors this fall, and visitors will be able to read about and visualize the lives of those who lived within. Like the Washington House, everything that furnishes the Quarter will be interactive and reflect archaeological finds. Planning remains ongoing for this, but when complete, visitors may find outdated tableware, evidence of meals, tools for labor, and personal effects.

    Emma Schlauder

    Research Archaeologist

    Bibliography

Augustine Washington Probate Inventory, 1743

Carson, Cary & Carl Lounsbury (editors)                                                                                                  2013     The Chesapeake House: Architectural Investigation by Colonial Williamsburg. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC.

Katz-Hyman, Martha B. & Kym S. Rice (editors)                                                                                       2011     World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States. Greenwood, Santa Barbara, CA.

Lanier, Gabrielle M. & Bernard L. Vlach                                                                                                     1997     Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

Lounsbury, Carl R. (editor)                                                                                                                  1994     An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

Samford, Patricia                                                                                                                                       1996     The Archaeology of African-American Slavery and Material Culture. William & Mary Quarterly 53(1): 87-114.

2000     Power Runs in Many Channels: Subfloor Pits and West African-Based Spiritual Traditions in Colonial Virginia. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI.                                                                                                                                           

Stilgoe, John R.                                                                                                                                          1982     Common Landscapes of America, 1580-1845. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Wells, Camille                                                                                                                                        1993     The Planter’s Prospect: Houses, Outbuildings, and Rural Landscapes in Eighteenth Century Virginia. Winterthur Portfolio 28(1): 1-31.

Vlach, John M.                                                                                                                                           1993     Back of the Big House: the Architecture of Plantation Slavery. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC.

  • Cowrie Shells: Cultural and Economic Ties in the 18th-Century Atlantic World 

    Figure 1: Ferry Farm cowries

    Many readers will undoubtedly recognize these two artifacts (Fig. 1). Known as cowrie shells, these artifacts have become synonymous with slavery and serve as identifiers for the presence of free and enslaved Black individuals in the Americas. Still, the role of cowries in the 18th century goes far beyond that of a marker.  

    Origin 

    Cowries (Cypraeidae), a taxonomic family of sea snail, live throughout the world (Fig. 2). However, the species with the most relevance to the 1700s reside in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the waters around the Maldives. They include Monetaria annulus (alt. Cypraea annulus, Annulus Linnaeus) and Monetaria moneta (Fig. 3). Even if your Latin proves non-existent, each species’ genus, along with M. moneta’s epithet, easily identifies the original role cowries played in human hands – money.  

    Figure 2: Monetaria monetaKwajalein Underwater
    Figure 3: M. moneta (L) and M. annulus (R) shells in their natural forms
    Barabara Heath

    Economics and Culture in West Africa 

    Centuries before the 1700s, West Africa thrived as a region of independent kingdoms and tribes. With these groups engaged in trade, they required a shared currency that served as a medium of exchange and a store of value. In choosing cowries as currency in the fourteenth century, West Africa continued a long history of groups throughout the world using shell money. Through pre-existing trade routes to the Indo-Pacific, West Africans could easily import the shells via other parts of Africa and had them transported across the Sahara. As the cowries used did not reside in West Africa and proved difficult to forge, the market had built in protections against hyperinflation and counterfeits.  

    Figure 4: Modified cowries strung togetherNational Museum of African American History & Culture

    Once in West Africa, the shells served as the basis of the region’s economies. Still, the shells took on several cultural roles. To keep cowries on hand, the shells often underwent modifications, including slicing off the rounded side of the shell or piercing them (Fig. 4). This allowed for stringing them together and weaving into hair or onto clothing. While done for practical reasons, this led cowries to enter the world of personal adornment. With this, their role expanded to symbols of status, fertility, and beauty while further appearing on ceremonial garb (Fig. 5). 

    Figure 5: Benin Bronze plaque; 16th-17th century. The warriors on either side of the central figure wear helmets decorated with cowries
    British Museum

    Atlantic Trade Routes 

    Europe and Africa had a long history of trade and exchange networks prior to the late 1400s, but the boom of global exploration led to an immediate escalation of these market connections. With European nations expanding their territories abroad and seeking to gain resources not found within their borders, they developed a need to break into the African markets while establishing permanent trade posts in the region. To achieve this, Europeans needed to supply goods that were in demand, and their minds set upon cowries.  

    Map by Adrian Kitzinger from Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shore of the Sahara
    West African Kingdoms and Trading States
    Map centered on the Atlantic Ocean with colored arrows showing movement of Enslaved Africans to the Americas, Raw Materials from Americas, and Manufactured goods from Europe Map showing the primary movement of Enslaved Africans, raw materials, and manufactured goods

    While an item of currency and self-adornment to West Africans, cowries became a commodity in the hands of European, and later American, merchants. With cowries, merchants could navigate the local economy and barter for desired goods. Inevitably, this included kidnapped Africans. In his memoir, Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745-1797), a famed writer and abolitionist, recalled how one enslaver sold him to another for 172 “little white shells” while still in Africa. An examination of eighteenth-century shipping records reveals that cowries ranked amongst the most common goods transported to West Africa and used to trade for captives (Fig 6). For Africans who then faced the Middle Passage, they forcibly traveled aboard these same ships that in turn provided West Africa with the currency driving the economy and their enslavement — cowries.   

    Figure 6: List of goods imported to the Isle of Man via Rotterdam for trade in Africa, 1761
    Manx National Heritage

    Cowries in the Americas 

    Indo-Pacific cowries arrived in the Americas through several carriers, but ultimately all traveled on slave ships. In trading cowries to West Africa, foreign merchants supplied both types even though the market preferred M. moneta. As such, they often had leftover M. annulus which remained onboard as cargo and ballast when the ships continued their trans-Atlantic journeys. Once in the Americas, some captains elected to dump or sell off the remaining cowries rather than transport them back across the Atlantic. Cowries additionally arrived in the Americas on the bodies of kidnapped Africans. While common practice involved stripping captives in Africa, primary accounts report individuals retained beads and shells in their hair and as necklaces. Enslavers further distributed beads, and likely shells, as pacifiers during the Middle Passage. 

    Once in the Americas, cowries largely remained within Black communities though they did face geographical restrictions. For Virginia, archaeological distribution of the shells, mainly M. annulus, places them within the Tidewater region. Higher counts of shells appear in urban areas (Yorktown = 252) while plantations typically only have a few. Although Virginia’s current archaeological cowrie count falls above 353, this remains too few to support the traditional role as currency. Instead, the shells continued in roles of adornment and ritual with added symbolism of cultural loss, memory, and survival. Outside random finds in areas associated with enslavement, cowries recovered in the Americas have derived from burials, spirit caches, and sub-floor pits (Fig. 7). 

    Figure 7: Necklace recovered from an enslaved burial ground at Newton Plantation, BarbadosJerome Handler

    At Ferry Farm 

    Over the course of our twenty-plus year excavation, two cowries have appeared at Ferry Farm. Found in contexts located around the Washington House, including one in a root cellar, our shells represent M. annulus and have undergone modification to allow for stringing or weaving (Fig. 8). As with findings in previous studies, we believe these shells took on cultural roles through self-adornment. Despite not knowing the identity of the shells’ owner(s), the cowries provide enough information to form an interpretation of who they belonged to and how they arrived at Ferry Farm. 

    Figure 8: Ferry Farm cowries with modifications visible

    As their contexts of origin line up with the Washington House, the enslaved individuals who left them behind likely lived and worked close to the Washington family. This places them within the working realm of the house or the nearby work yard. For accommodation, the owner(s) may have occupied the Quarter adjacent to the Washington house or lived in one of the work yard’s support buildings. 

    Regarding the arrival of cowries on the plantation, this likely happened through the movement and exchange of people and goods. To provide the labor required to meet their goals, enslavers moved those they enslaved between different plantations as needed and expanded their workforce through the enslavement of more people or hiring of persons enslaved by others. This could account for the arrival of cowries at Ferry Farm. Alternatively, Ferry Farm’s proximity to the (port) city of Fredericksburg meant the enslaved community had access to a regional economy and trans-Atlantic vessels. Either network may have transported cowries to the city, but it additionally meant that Fredericksburg served as a meeting and trade point for those enslaved in the region. 

    Legacy 

    Cowries have a long and nuanced history in the Atlantic World. Beginning as a unit of currency and cultural symbol, cowries fell prey to the demands of the market, taking on a new role in the hands of foreign merchants. What once served to strengthen economies and nations suddenly worked to strip away the very people who inhabited West Africa. For those who endured enslavement, the cowries that accompanied them became symbols of a stolen home, a continuation of culture, and a determination to survive. Today, cowries remain important items in African and African American cultures by symbolizing their history as currency, continuing in self-adornment and ritual roles, and appearing prominently in works of art (Fig. 9-11).  

    Figure 9-11: Left: The Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) tower in Cotonou, Benin, features cowrie shells on its facade Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International; ReThink Quarterly Center: 20-cedi coin from Ghana. Cedi, the Akan word for cowrie, is Ghana’s unit of currency Michael C. Carlos Museum
    Right: Beyoncé donning a cowrie headdress by Ivorian designer Lafalaise Dion Design Indaba

    Emma Schlauder

    Research Archaeologist

    Bibliography 

    Alpern, Stanley B.                                                                                                                                                  1995     What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods. History in Africa 22: 5-43

    Equiano, Olaudah                                                                                                                                    1789     The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written By Himself. London, UK

    Handler, Jerome S.                                                                                                                                                            2006     On the Transportation of Material Goods by Enslaved Africans During the Middle Passage: Preliminary findings from Documentary Sources. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter 9 (4): 1-22 (Article 16).

    2007     From Cambay in India to Barbados in the Caribbean: Two Unique Beads from a Plantation Slave Cemetery. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter 10(1): 1-10 (Article 1)

    Heath, Barbara J.                                                                                                                                                2016     Cowrie Shells, Global Trade, and Local Exchange: Piecing Together the Evidence for Colonial Virginia. Historical Archaeology 50 (2): 17-46.

    National Museum of African American History & Culture                                                                        n.d.     Cowrie Shells and Trade Power. National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian, Washington D.C. <https://nmaahc.si.edu/cowrie-shells-and-trade-power>. Accessed 3 June 2024.                                                                

    Ogundiran, Akinwumi                                                                                                                                                            2002     Of Small Things Remembered: Beads, Cowries, and Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in Yorubaland. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 35 (2/3): 427-457.

    Pallaver, Karin                                                                                                                                                 2023     Cowries, the currency that powered West Africa. ReThink Quarterly 7 <https://rethinkq.adp.com/artifact-cowries-west-africa/>. Accessed 3 June 2024.

    Pearce, Laurie E.                                                                                                                                              1992     The Cowrie Shell in Virginia: A Critical Evaluation of Potential Archaeological Significance. Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI.

    Radburn, Nicholas J.                                                                                                                                       2009     William Davenport, the Slave Trade, and Merchant Enterprise in Eighteenth-Century Liverpool. Master’s thesis, Department of History, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

    Samford, Patricia                                                                                                                                              1994     Searching for West African Cultural Meanings in the Archaeological Record. African Diaspora Newsletter 1 (3): 1-3 (Article 2).

  • Where is Whieldon? Survey Says: Probably Not on Your Table

    Archaeologists tend to have strong feelings about ceramics. Ceramics can play a major role in interpreting a site, as their materials often reflect their function. This can be helpful when determining how a site was used. For instance, finding an abundance of redwares and stonewares could indicate a primarily utilitarian site like what would have been used in our Cellar House whereas porcelain and refined earthenwares may reflect a more domestic space.  So, it really isn’t surprising that we feel some type of way about these artifacts.

    Redware and stoneware storage vessels
    Porcelain and refined earthenware tablewares

    But don’t let that fool you. Archaeologists have feelings about ceramics based solely on their appearance as well. It has come to my attention that Whieldon Ware just might hold the title as the most polarizing ceramic type as of late. These feelings were made very apparent during our recent acquisition of some Whieldon Ware pieces. Most either love or hate it; rarely is there an in-between.  Before we get into the ceramic and its distinct look that conjures images of either vomit or a work of art (depending on whom you ask), let’s go over a little background on its creator, Thomas Whieldon.

    Thomas Whieldon was an influential English potter producing examples of early creamware beginning in the mid-18th century. He gained popularity for his innovative shapes and decoration, which can be seen on various figurines, dishes, and other vessels. Whieldon is also well known for his partnership with the MVP of the ceramics world, Josiah Wedgwood, Mr. Creamware himself. Together, they developed advances in the realm of refined earthenware, like the perfecting of the green glaze as seen on the pineappleware we have found at Ferry Farm (Wedgwood & Ormsbee, 1947).

    Whieldon agate ware coffee pot. Source: British Museum
    Whieldon figurine. Source: The British Museum.

    With that said, what we commonly think of when referring to Whieldon Ware is Whieldon’s tortoiseshell or clouded wares. These were created by sponging metal oxides on cream-colored earthenware and then adding a clear lead glaze. The mixing of the metal oxides with the liquid glaze caused the colors to blend and streak, creating splotches of green, yellow, purple, blue, and brown, depending on the types of metal oxides used (Gallagher, 2015). This resulted in a clouded or tortoiseshell decoration. Due to the nature of the technique, no two pieces look exactly the same. For Whieldon lovers like myself, the uniqueness of each piece gives it its charm.

    Examples of Whieldon’s tortoiseshell/clouded ware with similar decoration to sherds found at Ferry Farm – Teapot. Source: Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge, Inc
    Examples of Whieldon’s tortoiseshell/clouded ware with similar decoration to sherds found at Ferry Farm – Platter. Source: Met Museum

    Now that we know more about Whieldon Ware and how some of us feel about it today, let’s talk about how Mary Washington may have felt about it. I firmly believe that she was not team Vomit Ware and instead found the decoration quite desirable. Our excavations have found evidence of at least four Whieldon Ware plates, a teapot, teacup, and other medium-sized holloware vessels at Ferry Farm. Considering the short-lived popularity of the type, lasting only from 1740-1775, we can be quite certain that it was Mary who was buying these items.

    Some Whieldon Ware vessel mends and sherds excavated at Ferry Farm

    Toward the end of the 1770’s, Whieldon Ware quickly went out of style and was replaced by Wedgwood’s new, improved creamware and its more subtle decoration. While it may have gone out of style, potters continued to replicate the technique for many years, which makes it difficult to attribute all examples of the type to Whieldon himself. After 1780, he retired from the business, demolished his factory, built an ornamental garden in its place, and spent the rest of his years as a sheriff (Hildyard, 2005; The London Gazette, 1785).

    So, there you have it, the very brief story of Whieldon and his wares.

     While Mary Washington and a couple of us in the lab are Team Whieldon all day, every day (or at least the days concerning Whieldon), the majority are a hard pass.  Where do you stand? Are you Team Whieldon or team Whieldout?

    Danielle Arens

    GWF Archaeologist

    References

    Gallagher, B. (2015). British Ceramics 1675-1825: The Mint Museum. Charlotte: The Mint Museum.

    Hildyard, R. (2005). English Pottery 1620-1840. London: V&A Publications.

    The London Gazette. (1785, November 12). The London Gazette(12699), p. 522.

    Wedgwood, J., & Ormsbee, T. H. (1947). Staffordshire Pottery. New York: Robert M. McBride & Company.

    Images

    https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1938-0314-47-CR – figurine

    https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1923-0122-13-CR – coffee pot

    https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/237853?who=Whieldon%2c+Thomas%2c+factory%24Thomas+Whieldon+factory%2c+Stoke-on-Trent%2c+Fenton+Vivian%2c+Staffordshire&ao=on&ft=*&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=3  – platter

    https://vandekar.com/inventory/Ceramics/British%20Pottery/Whieldon/works/26486 – tea pot

  • 2024 Dig Preview!

    Spring is in the air. The weather is warming up, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, and of course the dig season is about to start here at Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home.

    As part of the 2023 dig season, our team revisited the site of a colonial-era kitchen that had experienced a particularly destructive fire sometime in the middle of the 18th century. The kitchen’s foundation, as well as the surrounding landscape, had been compromised by the construction, and subsequent destruction, of two farmhouses that were built directly on top of everything. This site (FF-44) is located about 50 feet from the northeast corner of the Washington House.

    Location of this year’s dig at the colonial kitchen site (FF-44)

    The 18thC kitchen site was initially explored as part of an archaeological assessment of the Ferry Farm historic property in the early 1990s. The structure and its contents were originally interpreted as a house, but a reevaluation of the excavation notes and artifacts several years later reinterpreted this site as a kitchen, not a primary domestic dwelling. But research queries still exist, such as narrowing down the dates of construction and destruction of the structure, as well as determining the possibility that meaningful artifact deposits and landscape features that might help bolster the interpretation of the building still exist outside of the foundation.

    Location of the 18thC kitchen in relation to later 19th and 20thC farmhouses

    With these questions in mind, our efforts last summer focused on working out a game plan for reexamining the site for our future excavations.  During our dig, we uncovered the southwest corner of the original kitchen as well as the foundation of the 20th-century farmhouse overlaying it. Re-locating the site and evaluating the amount and extent of fill were our primary goals. That completed, this year we will concentrate on investigating the landscape surrounding the foundation and reexamining the burnt fill within.

    Last year’s excavation. Red arrow points to area inside of the kitchen, white arrow points to area outside of the building. The stone and concrete wall is part of the 1914 farmhouse foundation, which sits atop the colonial kitchen fill.
    Lead excavator Sarah on floor of kitchen cellar

    An honest question you might ask would be why would we want to learn more about what was outside of the foundation? Isn’t all the important stuff inside? In the archaeological world, a lot of valuable information can be learned from these outlying areas. Eighteenth-century trash middens are often found outside of a building because garbage was being thrown off of the porches and out the doors and windows. Studying this everyday disposal of trash can tell us how and when a building was being used, as well as traffic patterns by those using the building.

    Another interesting feature that can be found outside of a foundation is a builder’s trench. These trenches were dug by the individuals building the foundation, and as they worked and backfilled these trenches, items they were currently using were accidentally left behind. These artifacts can be excellent dating material and can really nail down a construction date.

    Other items we will be looking for are possible supplementary building features, such as post-in-the ground foundations and fences. Additionally, taking a second look at the site will help us better understand the previous archaeology that was done over thirty years ago.

    As for the exciting second site we started excavating last year, Feature 321, we are putting that project on hold for now and concentrating our efforts on the kitchen site. But work continues in the lab on all the interesting artifacts recovered during last summer’s dig.

    This year’s dig begins April 29thand ends July 12th.  Archaeologists are working on site from 8 am until 4 pm, Monday through Friday, and we gladly welcome questions from our site visitors.  So be sure to stop by and see what exciting things we uncover!

    Danielle Arens and Judy Jobrack

    George Washington Foundation Archaeologists

  • You Down with Old TD? Yeah, You Know Me!  

     TD Marked Tobacco Pipes That Is! 

    Clay tobacco pipes are a hallmark of historical archaeology. Grandma smoked, the enslaved smoked, the elite smoked, children smoked, just about everyone smoked. Smoking was one of America’s favorite pastimes, and there are plenty of pipes left in the archaeological record to prove it. Tobacco pipes were not only a vessel for a leisurely activity, they could also be a way to display one’s identity or beliefs.  

    Figure 1: A Smoking Club (NYPL)

    Because of this, the motifs and marks on tobacco pipes can tell us a lot about the people who used them.  

    Tobacco pipes can also be valuable tools for dating a site by using pipe bore diameters, typologies, and maker’s marks. This last one helps set the stage for our question of the hour.  

    Some makers would mark their pipes to indicate a product as theirs.  These marks can be found on different parts of a pipe, such as the bowl, heel, or stem. Finding a pipe with a maker’s mark can be very exciting as it allows a pipe to be attributed to a specific pipe maker and, thus, a time period. But that is not always the case. One of the more common maker’s marks in many archaeological sites is the mark “TD.” Remember the two we found during last summer’s dig?  

    Figure 2: Diagram of a tobacco pipe National Pipe Archive
    Figure 3: TD pipe bowls in Ferry Farm collection
    Figure 4: TD pipe bowl from 2023 dig

     So, you’re probably thinking, what’s the question again? Just go look up a pipe maker with the initials TD, and you will have your maker. Well, unfortunately, it’s not always that easy. 

    There are multiple pipe makers with those initials, and the pipes with variations of the TD mark have been found at sites with occupation dates suggesting the mark was being produced from the mid-18th century all the way into the 20th century. At some point, the mark stopped representing a single maker and instead became a symbol used on pipes throughout the years, reflecting clay tobacco pipes themselves. Think of it as the Kleenex or Q-tip of its time. TD became synonymous with clay tobacco pipes. This can be seen in written records like a catalog from 1892 that touts their rendition of “the Celebrated “T.D.” pipe” (Zorn). An early 20th-century song referencing “the Old TD” also supports the lasting influence of the mark (Cooper, 1907, as cited by Walker, 1966).  

    Figure 5: George Zorn & Co.’s “T.D.” pipe advertisement 1892
    Figure 6: Early 20th-century smoking song, no known date or author, Cooper 1907 as cited by Walker 1966

    Since there is no solid end date to help frame who the possible maker could be, archaeologists and historians have focused on looking at beginning dates to help find the original maker of the TD pipes, settling on a date in the middle of the 18th century. Archaeologists Adrian Oswald and Iain Walker are often cited as laying the foundations of the current TD lore. The combination of their findings identifies 18th-century London-based pipemaker Thomas Dormer as the most likely originator of the TD mark (Walker, 1966). With that said, Walker (1966) states that more information will have to be found to definitively give Dormer credit for originating the mark. 

    So, that brings us to the start of my research and a revisiting of the foundation of this theory, which was laid out as early as the 1930s.  Who is Thomas Dormer, and is he the original TD? Why were TD pipes so popular that they were copied and made for centuries? And can we find new information to crack the case of the elusive TD mark? 

    The first step of the investigation is reviewing the literature and identifying current thoughts on TD pipes and their maker. One of the earliest deep dives into TD pipe origins can be found in the article “A Theory Regarding TD pipes” in the November 1937 printing of Antiques magazine. In this article, Alfred Hopkins expresses the mystery surrounding the mark and suggests its possible meaning. At the time, Hopkins (1937) and his contemporaries were unable to find potential pipe makers with the initials TD that would indicate the mark was referring to a maker. Instead, he states that it was a trademark of sorts to identify a quality product (Hopkins, 1937). He also mentions that TD may represent the beginning of the Christian hymn Te Deum Laudamus (Hopkins, 1937). Now remember, folks, this was written in the 1930s, and at the time, they didn’t have easy access to information. While more information has since been shared, we now know that there were indeed pipe makers with these initials and look more toward a maker rather than a hymn; Hopkins’ article plays an integral part in our quest by illustrating that there was an interest in the TD mark as early as the 1930s.  

    Figure 7: 1937 Alfred Hopkins article 

    Moving away from the 1930s and into the 1960s, Adrian Oswald compiled an index of pipe makers, which Iain Walker (1966) refined to find three possible English pipe makers that could be the originator of the mark: Thomas Dennis, Thomas Darkes, and Thomas Dormer. Walker (1966) continued this search and identified London-based pipemaker Thomas Dormer as the most likely of the three. Nailing down their sources became the next part of the puzzle in an attempt to confirm this information through primary source research and examination of any sources referred to in support of the theory.  

    This is where the quest to find new information about Thomas Dormer begins. Through this investigation, I was able to identify the “OG TD,” some juicy 18th-century family drama, and the possible first plagiarizers of the TD mark. There are twists, turns, and, unfortunately, too much to tell you in just one blog, so be sure to check out part two, where we get to the bottom of this mystery that began nearly 100 years ago. 

    Danielle Arens

    GWF Archaeologist

    ​​References 

    ​​(2022). Retrieved from George-M-Woodward-mavcor.yale.edu.jpg 

    ​George Zorn & Co. (1892). Pipes & Smokers Articles. Philadelphia. 

    ​Hopkins, A. (1937, November). A Theory Regarding TD Pipes. Antiques, pp. 234-235. 

    ​National Pipe Archive. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pipearchive.co.uk/images/how%20to/pipe_figure_1.jpg&nbsp;

    ​Walker, I. (1966, June). TD Pipes – A Preliminary Study. Quarterly Bulletin Archeological Society of Virginia, pp. 86-102. 

    ​​​ 

  • Seeing The Big Picture:  How Excavated Ceramics Informed The George Washington Foundation’s Acquisition of Complete Pieces for Display

    The archaeology and curatorial departments for The George Washington Foundation have long worked together to furnish the reproduced Washington house with historically accurate items that resemble as closely as possible the ones that George and his family would have lived with daily. These pieces are not originals, which means visitors touring the house can handle them.

    Go ahead and touch everything.

    In our latest collaboration we’ve been examining sherds of ceramic vessels owned by the Washington’s to obtain actual eighteenth-century dishes. We want to display these dishes in our gallery to give visitors an idea of what the whole vessels looked like. Four such ceramics have recently been acquired at auctions by the Foundation and you can see them first here along with the excavated remnants they resemble.

    Creamware tankard with strawberry terminals and twisted reeded handles, ca. 1750-1800
    Creamware tankard with strawberry terminals and twisted reeded handles, ca. 1750-1800
    Creamware jug with strawberry terminals and twisted reed handles; face below the spout of the jug. ca. 1750-1800
    Creamware sauceboat with curved handle which terminate with strawberry flowers.
    Moulded detail finials

    Three of our acquisitions are a type of English ceramic called ‘creamware,’ which was invented in the early 1760’s and was very popular with George’s mother, Mary. Both this lovely pitcher and mug exhibit decorative elements represented by our excavated ceramics. Most prominent are the elegantly curved handles that terminate in delicate strawberry flowers. At least two vessels with these types of handles have been recovered at Ferry Farm. The first is a highly decorative creamware sauce boat and the second a petite teacup, both of which were considered quite fashionable for the time. The jug and teacup also share a common form of decoration called a ‘beaded rim.’

    Creamware jug with strawberry terminals and twisted reed handles; face below the spout of the jug, ca. 1750-1800
    Creamware jug with strawberry terminals and twisted reed handles; face below the spout of the jug. ca. 1750-1800
    Creamware sherd with “beaded rim”
    Creamware teacup sherd with “beaded rim”

    Another teacup owned by Mary was this beautiful piece hand-painted with a detailed swag motif. But from the sherds it’s difficult to really appreciate how graceful this decoration is. Luckily, our curators hunted down a similar cup and saucer with the same decoration, which is unusual. The saucer also features a beaded rim that has been filled in with gold gilding, although we believe the gold to be a later addition to the piece. The cup and saucer also have handwritten tags affixed to the bases which indicate they had the distinction of having been in the collection of a well-known (at least to ceramics geeks like yours truly) collector of creamware. This man by the name of Donald Towner had written extensively on the topic of English ceramics and over his career had amassed a large study collection, of which this was one. His book on the Leeds Pottery in England features a catalogue from the pottery that includes many of the decorative elements and shapes discussed above (Towner, 1965).

    English Creamware Cup and Saucer, ca. 1775-1780
    English Creamware Saucer, ca. 1775-1780. Formerly in Donald Tower Collection, 1968, A Belton, 1988 and Diana Edwards Murnaghan
    Teacup from Donald Towner Collection, 1968.
    Teacup sherd with swag motif

    But my favorite is this delightfully potbellied creamer with three legs featuring lion’s heads and paws for feet. The ceramic type in question is called Whieldon and started to come on the market in England around 1749. Of note is the raised molded leaf decoration which resembles one sherd from our collection. While we may never know the exact type of vessel our leaf came from, the complete creamer gives one a better idea of how the decoration was placed and looked. Mary’s choice of ceramics played a large part in emphasizing her and her children’s place among the Virginia Gentry and we’re very pleased to have some whole examples now to help illustrate to visitors just how lovely some of these dishes were!

    Whieldon ware sherd, ca. 1740-1770
    Staffordshire Mottled Creamware Milk Jug, c. 1755-1765
    Staffordshire Mottled Creamware Milk Jug, c. 1755-1765

    Mara Kaktins, Archaeologist & Lab Manager

    Bibliography

    Towner, Donald.  The Leeds Pottery, 1965.  Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., New York.