Give me a hen!

Anne and I have stumbled upon many tiny pieces of metal during our cataloging, and some of the most interesting of these are printer's type. So far close to twenty pieces of printer's type have been found in units at Port Tobacco, which is understandable as at the town's peak it was the home of two newspapers: The Port Tobacco Times and The Maryland Independent. While these small pieces can be difficult to recognize, two distinguishing features that aid in their identification are notches on one end of the type which were to hold the type in the printing press, and, if the type is undamaged, a letter on the opposite tip. These letters are quite minuscule, usually no larger than 10 or 12 pt. font. These three pieces of type came from three different units in the Jamieson Field. They are an "e," an "n" (upside down in our picture) and an "h." So far these are the only letters we have been able to identify.

These pieces of printer's type are no longer than an inch in length and the tips are at most 4mm high.

While we cannot determine which newspaper these printer's types were used for, they are in relatively close proximity to the south side of the town square where the Port Tobacco Times press was located. This paper was published weekly from around 1845 until 1898. We will let our readers know when we can actually form a sentence.


Kelley and Anne

Small Find

Small drawer pull, approximately half and inch long.

Today, while cataloging artifacts from Unit 72 Stratum 1, in the Jamieson field, Kelley and I came across a delicate piece of copper alloy furniture hardware. It may be a drawer pull from a small object, such as a jewelry box. The hinge connection is handmade. The decorated handle is most likely cast. The front side has a leaf and flower motif, while the back side says '1855'. This could be a manufacturing number, but it is most likely a date.

Just a Reminder:

Tom Forhan will be at the Crownsville Lab washing artifacts tomorrow, volunteers are welcome.

Small Finds

What is a glass sphere, a little over a half inch in diameter, has a hole running clear through from one pole to the next, and is black. If you guessed a bead, you are correct. (Don't be smug...it wasn't that difficult.)


This is one of a number of small interesting finds recovered from Port Tobacco this spring. As cataloguing progresses, we will highlight others.

The bead came from one of the two excavation units in the south part of the Compton field, units we dug in search of the James Swann House. (It turns out that we probably found the Swann House site on the west side of the hedgerow, about 30 ft from where Pete and his team were digging in the woods.) We had also uncovered a posthole and mold in one of those two units in Compton field...something certainly was afoot there in the Colonial Period.

Dennis Curry opined at the time that this artifact is a trade bead; viz., a bead of European manufacture (typically made in Italy or the Netherlands) traded to East Coast Indians for animal pelts, maize, meat, and sundry other items. If it is a trade bead, it is the third so far recovered from Port Tobacco and another indication that colonists and Indians interacted on site.

Reminder: Scott will run another lab this Saturday, 9 AM to 3 PM, at the Port Tobacco Courthouse, and Pete will run one at Crownsville on Monday, 9 AM to 3 PM.

Jim