Spaulding Square

One of the challenges to reconstructing Port Tobacco's lot organization is the tendency of owners to consolidate and rename their lands, omitting entirely from the legal descriptions the original lot numbers. an example is the parcel that we focused on last June, the portion of the field owned by the Compton family.


The southern portion of this parcel traces back to the ownership of Margaret Baillie and Margaret Boyd. It was called Lots 4 and 5, as well as part of Spaulding's Square when William Boswell acquired them in 1859 (Liber JHC 1, folio 167).

On the north (village green) side of these lots was the land of Elijah W. Day and, I think, the Centennial Hotel lot. Here's where I'm going with this: I think the reason that Pete's excavations at the Centennial Hotel locus failed to encounter the expected foundations is that we were not on the Centennial hotel/Elijah W. Day lot...we were on Lots 4 and 5.

Jim