Cleaning and Pow Wow

Found: large yellow orb in the sky. Please contact the interns at Port Tobacco if it is yours.

Today it stopped raining, but due to muddy units we cleaned artifacts with our wonderful volunteers. This included cleaning the artifacts with water and tooth brushes, sorting out some rocks that snuck in. The artifacts will be sorted out again when they are cataloged.Legers were also found today that detail some of the purchases made at Port Tobacco during the mid 1800s. We would like to thank Brent for his wonderful chopped salad.

We left work early to go to the Pow wow being held by the Cedarville Band of the Piscataway. There we saw traditional dances by many different tribes and ate fry bread. A good time was had by all.

If it is at all possible we will be digging tomorrow. Pleeeease let the sun shine tomorrow!

Magen
Allison

Order Restored

I visited Port Tobacco today, quelling the student riot and turning away the cabana boy applicants. Order has been restored.

The Heidelberg Three spent the day with volunteers Brent, Elsie, Myron, and Belinda washing artifacts. I brought back to my Annapolis office approximately four boxes of artifacts that had already been cleaned, sorted, and rebagged. Pete and Kelley (my new staffer of whom you will hear more of in a week or so) spent much of Friday cataloguing material. Wait until they see the new material.

Steve Lohr and I walked around the site a little bit and found another pipeset boundary marker. We also found what may be the James Swann site...it is in the hedgerow about 20 ft northwest of where Pete had excavated three units during the ASM field session. Whoops.

April is taking Allison, Katharine and Magen to the Piscataway pow wow after work. We are fortunate in that the people whom we study have descendants in the immediate area and we look to them for insights into what we find and for novel avenues of research.

Jim

Wanted: Cabana Boys

Today the rainstorms continued here at Port Tobacco so we were forced to stay inside the courthouse cleaning and organizing collections while singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Poor Brent came to help us. While perusing binders full of various tidbits of information, Allison found reference to information at Pratt Library in Baltimore. More excitingly, she also found reference to a bell in the courthouse which resulted in Dr Beisaw going on an expedition to find it.

It has also been decided that we need four cabana boys, so we will be accepting applications starting tomorrow. Please apply in person, and you may need a kayak to reach us.

Katharine
Magen
Allison

Weather report

Missing: one orange sphere that warms and dries the earth

If found, please send to Port Tobacco.

Saturday will be a lab day. We are setting up some lab space in the courthouse. Volunteers are welcome to come and was artifacts from 8:30am to 2:30 pm.

The PTAP team will be at the Cedarville Powwow in Waldorf from 3pm on after labwork.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

Rain day

Port Tobacco is a swamp from the nonstop rain. The interns and I will attempt various indoor tasks at the courthouse and Burch House. Volunteers can take the day off. Check back tonight for an update on tomorrow's plans. It may be too wet to dig until Sunday.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

Breaking New Ground

Despite the weather forcast we were able to lay in two new units in search of George Atzerodt's carriage shop. I spoke to Jim Barbour about the blacksmith shop that we are hoping was once the carriage shop and he provided us with a 1910 photograph that showed it's location near where we are digging.

The soils are pretty muddy from the regular. That slowed us down a bit but we got a lot done and we are getting artifacts that may be associated with the blacksmith shop or the stables that adjoined it.

The interns were great today. Katharine ran the total station. Magen laid in the units. Allison provided hours of entertainment with her flamingo impersonation.

Friday has the potential to be a rain day but we are an optimistic bunch. After today I am handing over blog duties to the interns. Let's see what they have to say.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

Rain, rain, go away

It will certainly rain today but until the showers start we will go ahead an lay in new units in preparation for fairer weather. Once the showers start we will move inside the Burch house or courthouse and do labwork for the rest of the day.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

Wednesday Road Trip

After 12 hours of non-stop storms, Jim called me in the morning and suggested that I bring the interns to Annapolis to wash artifacts. We took him up on that offer.

Pete and I completed some managerial tasks while Anne, Kelly, Allison, Katharine, and Magen worked on the artifacts.

I sent a preliminary summary of our ASM field session findings and sent that to Myron, the newsletter editor. It should be part of the July newsletter.

We hope to get back to excavating tomorrow but it is storming again here in PT.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

Lot lines

Caution: this blog contains material that may be offensive. Lawyers and surveyors suffering from hypertension and other cardiopulmonary conditions are advised to proceed no further.

During the ASM field session, Scott applied his survey experience with Steve's metal detector wizardry to successfully locate two of the pipes marking the Compton family property on which we have focused much of our efforts at Port Tobacco. With these two points, we have been able to place a 1950s plat accurately on our site map (see cyan line on map below). Three points (cyan arrows) correspond nearly perfectly.

Site map with the newly identified property corners.

This plat will assist us in tracing back land conveyances and, hopefully, will lead to the successful placement of such sites as the Indian King Hotel on the ground.

It is interesting that the PTAP team identified a fourth pipe marker that lies equidistant (~135 ft) between two of the markers. I do not have the plat in front of me, but I do not recall a property line at this location, suggesting that we have a line from another survey.

With April beginning the search for several Civil War era sites, we will renew our efforts to reconstruct land holdings within the town. Stay tuned.

Jim

Soggy Port Tobacco

No fieldwork at Port Tobacco on Wednesday. It has been raining off and on for hours.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

A day of rest

The ASM field session is over. I gave the interns today off after a
week of non-stop travel and excavation. They went into DC to explore.

We were scheduled to start our Preserve America excavations tomorrow,
Wednesday, but we may push that back to Thursday. Unless I post
another blog today, consider Wednesday a day of too.

For all of June I can guarantee that we will be excavating in Port
Tobacco from Friday morning until Monday afternoon. Plan to join us if
you can.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

Laundromat lessons

The interns and I are waiting for our laundry to dry. It is amazing
how many clothes four women can go through in one week.

Today was a busy day as we closed out all of our units. That process
includes a lot of profile and plan view drawing.

Pete's rubble layer extends down for a foot more past where we were
able to excavate. This and other feature deposits are being preserved
in place for another day. Thanks to Mark, our units have all been
backfilled in anticipation of our shift to the Lincoln Assassination
sites on Wednesday. We have the northeast corner of unit 61 staked out
and ready to go.

-April
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April M. Beisaw

All Good Things

The tents came down today and much of the equipment was loaded into the Maryland Historical Trust van. A sad time.

On behalf of myself, April, and the extended PTAP team, I heartily thank our friends at the Trust for their help and collegiality. We also thank Mark Thomason for the use of his front-end loader and bush hog, and his work with the machine. Machines can save a great deal of valuable labor, labor better devoted to excavation than backfilling holes.

Dennis Curry (Maryland Historical Trust) and I did a few quick calculations this morning. We put the total value of the ASM field session at between $50,000 and $60,000. Thank you Trust and thank you ASM.

I would also like to commend my crew and April's students...you guys performed admirably.

And to all of you who participated or visited, we had a great time and we hope you did too. Your help and interest cannot be quantified in currency.

Jim

Sunday status

We had so many visitors at Port Tobacco that today was a whirlwind of tours for me. The team I watching Indiana Jones in the courthouse so I am unable to poll them for tidbits for today's blog.

The highlights, as I remember them, are as follows. Jim found more postholes in Anne's area. This is an area of the town that did not have buildings in the late 1800s (what the survivng maps date to) and the features themselves suggest a 1700s date to these buildings and fencelines. Pete's team is still removing brick and mortar rubble from the center of the Native American area but they did open a new unit to try to find some Native American features away from that building. Several clay marbles from the late 1800s and some coins came out of the top layers of that unit. Scott's team identified a possible Native American posthole in one unit but again we have historic features that intrude on that same level.

Tomorrow is our last excavation day in these areas of the site. Tuesday is the first day off for the interns and I. On Wednesday we begin work on the Civil War aspects of the town.

-April
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April M. Beisaw