Digging for county history

Archeological finds lead to old courthouse

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH St. Mary’s College of Maryland student Jackie Mastny, background, holds a measuring tape as Scott Tucker marks an area with a trowel. St. Mary’s College of Maryland professor Julia King is at right. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photos At top, SMCM student Claire DeRieux of Waldorf sifts through finds at the Greenland Farm site for artifacts. Below, a 1697 plat of the Charles Countycourthouse lot.

A recent archeological dig conducted at Greenland Farm just south of La Plata by St. Mary’s College of Maryland professor Julia King and several of her students led to an unveiling of life during the 1600s.

The team of diggers found artifacts from a 1674 Charles County courthouse and remains from the home of adjacent property owner Thomas Hussey, who also managed the land where the courthouse sat.

Mike Sullivan of Mount Victoria, one of four investors in the project, said he wanted to gather more information about the county’s history, starting with what was considered a ‘‘lost” courthouse.

He said the project started when he began plans for ‘‘Pathways to History, Charles County, Maryland,” a coffee-table book featuring historic photos. Proceeds from the book sales will be donated to the nonprofit Smallwood Foundation.

Sullivan, along with Wetherburn Associates in Waldorf, raised money for the search of the old courthouse.

‘‘It was the first courthouse, and it was impossible to locate and I took that as a challenge. I wanted to see why it was impossible to locate,” Sullivan said.

According to Sullivan, the county’s land records are the best in the state and with the help of genealogy, he took what he found and turned it over to a professional genealogist to prove his theory. From there, King and her students were able to step in.

‘‘The hard part was for the archeologists. It was like finding a needle in a haystack,” he said.

Recent SMCM graduate Scott Strickland said, ‘‘We did shelved test pits [digs] in the wheat field at 50-feet intervals. Our concentration was on artifacts, and we found nothing.”

But the archeologists didn’t give up, and after two and a half weeks in the Greenland Farm field, they were soon onto something bigger than just fields of wheat.

It wasn’t until the students began to explore a soybean field where they stumbled upon artifacts of the 17th-century courthouse.

‘‘It was then looking promising. It was a gradual process in finding stemware pieces,” said recent SMCM graduate Scott Tucker of Hagerstown. ‘‘We then began doing intervals at 25 feet to pinpoint the area of where the courthouse would be. There’s pretty rich history out here.”

‘‘We found bits of stoneware, tobacco stems and wine glasses. The area around where Hussey lived, there was a higher concentration of artifacts,” said Strickland, a St. Inigoes resident.

According to King, in 1658 Charles County didn’t have a courthouse, but in 1674 the Colonial assembly passed a law saying every county must have a courthouse and so the people of the county got to work quickly on building one.

‘‘Until then, the courthouse may have been an old house,” King said.

Even after things were looking glum in the earlier weeks of the dig, Sullivan said, ‘‘It was enough to discourage anybody. Dr. King and the students worked very, very hard digging in 100-degree weather. They were very diligent. I was never discouraged at all though. It was just a matter of finding it on the right day and place. For the last couple of 100 years no one ever knew where it was.”

And once the crew began to unravel discoveries in the soybean field it opened up doors to other artifacts on the property and learning opportunities.

‘‘Julia spoke a lot about the 17th century. We learned that back then beer was considered nutritious and tobacco was a great remedy for lung problems,” Tucker said. ‘‘But it was frowned upon to be drunk.”

The artifacts — including diamond pattern pipes with the initials L.E. for Llewen Evans, a pipe-maker in England from 1660 to 1689 — that have been found will be taken to a lab to be washed and catalogued for future research.

‘‘The courthouse was a wooden building on a wooden foundation and 50 years later, it started to rot and decay. It wasn’t repaired because it wasn’t worth it. It was so far out and owning a horse was expensive. People were coming here by foot or by horse then,” said King. ‘‘In 1727, the courthouse site was auctioned and the idea was to flip it, but it didn’t happen.”

SMCM student Jackie Mastny of Madison, Wis., said, ‘‘You just salvage what you can and just let the rest go. It’s not made of anything substantial, so it will just rot away. One person’s trash is another’s person’s treasure.”

According to Sullivan, the Discovery Channel has expressed an interest in the new discovery and will include the dig in an upcoming series.

What’s next for Sullivan and King?

He said a new expedition that will shake even the most steadfast archeologist.

‘‘We’re getting ready to start a new project for the Lost Zekiah Fort — the 1680s fort for the Indians, it’s never been found. Part of the reason it’s never been found is because of heavy vegetation with gigantic trees and the [seekers] didn’t seem to sift through clues to put the puzzle together ...I’m a risk-taker by nature,” Sullivan said. ‘‘There was so much Colonial militia, attacks and wars on that property [Fort Zekiah] and it’s just been lost [in La Plata].

‘‘These are things that were lost or unknown to our community, but there’s still a sense of pride in the community ... This [history] is a gift to the county.”