When
excavations at Broaddus Flats (44Hn254) began in the Fall of
1992, the author and his young students from the Mathematics
and Science Center really did not know what to expect. The most
we could hope for, if this were like practically every other
dig in a cultivated field, would be the dark stains in the light
brown subsoil of posts that once supported an earthfast house.
These posts, hopefully, would indicate a pattern that would
show us the dimensions of a house built as a temporary structure—one
that had long since burned or rotted into oblivion.
However, in the ten years of
excavation on the site, we have not found a single posthole
within the immediate area of the house. Instead, students began
removal of topsoil (sifting to recover artifacts) and, in the
process, hit some bricks in situ about 12” below the surface.
In the coming weeks, we uncovered the entire gable end foundation
to the west side of a structure, neatly cut off by the plow
at approximately 12” – 14” below the surface.
The brickwork stretched for 21’ almost to the inch, and
chimney “cheeks” for a 6’ closed-in fireplace
were clearly discernable . This foundation, however, exhibited
some unusual features as well. Excavators noticed that the foundation
was comprised entirely of brick “bats” (that is,
broken bricks) and that they terminated at only 6’ into
the main part of the house.
We
next decided to see if this structure may have had another gable-end
brick foundation—this time on the east side—so we
began probing the topsoil at a distance of about 15’ eastward
about every foot. At about 40’ from the west foundation,
we struck another group of bricks in situ—this soon turned
out to be the east gable-end foundation, a mirror image of that
on the west exactly 42’ away. This foundation, although
very exact in its measurements also, was again comprised of
brick bats and stretched only 6’ into the house area.
Suspecting that postholes must exist between the two brick foundations,
the author next opened 3’ wide trenches between the “cut-off”
gable-ends—posts that surely would have supported the
sills on the north and south sides of the structure. After weeks
of searching, we found not a single colonial posthole, only
a series of 3” stains indicating an earlier Indian posthole
pattern.
After the discovery of a 135
lb. stone in the rubbish-filled cellar in 1995, the author has
concluded (for now) that heavy stones such as this must have
been set under the sills, probably about halfway, to give the
needed support. Evidently, the house site on Broaddus Flats
used to have several large stones. These were removed earlier
in the century, most often by the man who farmed the property
between 1961 and 1990. His son informed me that several large
stones were extracted from the soil and ‘ tossed into
the river ’ nearby. In the fall of 2002 during the bad
drought, I easily found eleven large stones, some with tool
marks evident, in a cluster just below the embankment.
Examples
of subterranean stone foundations for homes are rare in colonial
Tidewater, Virginia, but archaeologists have found a few. The
most notable, in the author’s view, is the 42’ x
24’ continuous foundation of roughly-dressed English siltstone
at Flowerdew Hundred Plantation discovered by archaeologists
working for the College of William & Mary in the early 1970s.
On closer examination, archaeologists discovered the scant remains
of mortared bricks on top of the west wall of the structure;
the farmer’s plow had left only this meager evidence of
a brick foundation once visible above ground level. The author
has been excavating a Federal Period home site (about 1810)
in Hanover County, Virginia, on Camp Hanover property, using
the young campers themselves to dig out the only remains of
the burned structure. We have not uncovered to date the entire
house site, but the part we have excavated clearly shows the
use of stone and brick piers, spaced unevenly and buried about
one foot into the soil, to support the sills and floor joists.
Although I have been describing
deep-set foundations where stone and brick were employed together
by early American builders, it is entirely conceivable that
piers of stone or brick alone could have been set into shallow
depressions under the sills here at 44Hn254. This method was
used well into this century, especially in the western parts
of Virginia where stone is plentiful. Employing this technique
would allow for much air to circulate under the house, or perhaps
account for a reliable way for builders to level the structure
on a hillside. The author’s Camp Hanover house site is
on a slight grade that leads down to a spring. If this house
site had ever been put under the plow, any trace of stone and
brick piers would have disappeared, except perhaps for a few
large stones in the topsoil. Some excavated continuous foundations
have gaps that still puzzle archaeologists. Were these to allow
small domesticated animals to live underneath the house, or
for the free flow of air to keep the sills and floor joists
dry? or both?
Student excavators cleaning off
topsoil in front of the east hearth in 1993 came across a large
dark stain in the subsoil. This turned out to be a root pit
or root “cellar” measuring 4.5’ x 2.5’
and 2.5’ into the subsoil. This feature had two discernable
levels—several inches of compacted ash with some burned
artifacts ( mostly clay pipe parts ), and a thick layer of building
debris from the demise of the house, probably in the mid 18th
century. The frequency and function of the root pit on house
sites of this time period in Virginia history has been explored
in some depth by Dr. William Kelso in his 1984 publication,
Kingsmill Plantations 1619-1800: Archaeology of Country
Life in Colonial Virginia.
Here he points out that this
subterranean feature was used as early as the late 17th century
and, on slaves’ cabins, as late as the early 19th century
for storage of rooted plants, such as potatoes, parsnips, carrots,
etc. The early pits seemed to be no more than uneven holes in
the ground with natural clay walls; ours at Broaddus Flats was
just such a hole. Later pits, such as the one associated with
the log slave cabin at Bremo Recess Plantation in Fluvanna Co.,
Va. (see Kelso’s 1982 notes on excavations there) had
well-constructed, brick-lined walls.
There is no clear way of knowing
when our inhabitants quit using this pit for its original purpose
and started dumping ash from the fireplace(s). The heavy, thick
layer of brick and mortar rubble in our root pit compacted the
ash down to a thin layer of only a few inches. I thought, for
a short while, that this feature might be the only evidence
we would get of ash disposal on the site, until discovery of
the basement in 1994.
Student excavators working in
a square on the north side of the house uncovered what turned
out to be a rather large ( approx. 30’ X 15’ ) and
irregular soil stain containing mostly dark gray loam with a
lot of charcoal and ash. This fill soil matched point for point
the ash layer in the bottom of the root pit and even had large
amounts of burned animal bones and pipe parts protruding from
the top.
This feature also appeared to
be an extension of the main house to the north, and, to the
author, was perhaps a “ wing “ stretching out at
least 30’ from the main house. We decided to bisect the
feature on an east-west axis in order to obtain a profile of
the later fill into it. This action produced dramatic results
and even resulted in the discovery of another major feature—brick
steps leading from the outside down into the cellar. These steps
were well-made and well preserved, missing only their oak plank
“noses” but still retaining the two brick piers
that supported the sill above. We discovered the first of these
latter features in the top foot of excavations in the cellar’s
south side. Our profile cut nearly exactly down the middle of
the steps and clearly showed that large amounts of water, sand
and gravel once poured down this cavity into the cellar, partially
filling it ( mid to late-18th century flood?). This, however,
was only part of the story—at least the “ kitchen
wing “ burned shortly afterwards, laying down a thick
layer of building debris and burned artifacts of all sorts.
Excavators found a thin layer of yellow-red clay in the top
of the feature—this layer was uneven and stretched about
6’ across the top. This appears to have been a later plug
to bring the level of the basement even with the surface.
In 1996, students began the removal
of fill soil from the basement’s north half and discovered
no new features, but thousands more artifacts. A more complete
discussion of some of the artifacts appears on another page
on this Web site.
Excavators could find no evidence
of brick walls in the cellar, only scant traces of wooden boards
running vertically on the south wall. The basement had a clay
floor. We could find no traces of a subterranean pit in this
floor. A few late-17th century artifacts had been walked down
into this soft clay surface before the entire floor was covered
by a lens of fine dark gray ash and black loam.
After all drawings and photographs
were complete on the cellar, we began removal of topsoil from
the area north of the cellar in hopes of revealing a curious-looking
feature that appeared to be the edge of a posthole. Fill in
this feature was identical with that of the root pit and the
cellar. Our curiosity was immediately tweaked when students
discovered two early 18th century pipe bowls while cleaning
off the surface. Then more discoveries—another line of
bricks (or more accurately, brick bats) 2.5 bricks thick and
stretching east-west for 17’ exactly. This was undoubtedly
the foundation for the kitchen fireplace. Unlike the other two
foundations, this had only two slots – one for the main
fireplace (8’ wide) and the other for the oven (6’
wide). It was under the latter feature that the builder had
dug a shallow pit for ash from the oven to fall down into; it
was the edge of this feature that we originally confused with
a posthole. Artifacts in this feature were limited to a few
pipe parts (burned) and several nails.
Taking this newest find into
consideration, it was tempting to declare that the dimensions
of the “kitchen wing” were simply 32’ x 17’,
but in order to verify this assumption we needed to explore
off at least one of the corners (NW or NE) to see if we could
discover a large corner post. Finding such a post would suggest
the wing was somewhat wider than the 17’ fireplace/oven
foundation. At this writing (early 2003) student excavators
and I have explored to the west for over 20’ and have
not discovered a post substantial enough to be a corner post.
Therefore, for now, I have concluded that this wing was only
17’ wide. A couple of archeologists have asked if this
wing could have, in fact, been the first structure built on
this site; then, when the owner got a little wealthier and his
family grew, he added on the 42’ x 21’ addition.
This is entirely conceivable, but, in my view, would have had
to happen by about 1700 or shortly thereafter. I have, however,
only one bit of physical evidence to support my assumption and
that is, the brick foundations on both “parts” of
the house are virtually identical; they are the same depth into
the subsoil, comprised of the same brick bats, and the same
thickness—2.5 bricks.
Several artists have attempted
to draw the house, or more correctly, what the house may have
looked like. The author’s favorite is still Gordon Lohr’s
rendition, done after we completed excavations on the “kitchen”
fireplace.
After some research into building
methods in this trans-seventeenth / eighteenth century period,
I have come to believe that this structure probably had features
characteristic of most Anglo-American homes of this so-called
Transitional Period, a building style that exhibited both the
time-tested Medieval methods and the new emerging Georgian style.
What is fairly clear is that this structure shows all the earmarks
of a hall / parlor floor plan, with a central passageway, and
a rather good-size wing stretching northward in the back (or
front?).
With the 1997 discovery of a
cluster of postholes on the south face of the house, we are
left with little doubt that this structure had a covered porch
entranceway, leading into a central passage, which in turn bisected
the 42’ x 21’ addition. The close proximity of this
porch / entrance with the slot trench (containing the defense
/ stockade fence) puzzled us at first. Why would anyone cram
the house so close to the fence, leaving little room to approach
the main door? If defense was, in fact, foremost on the owner’s
mind, as I think it was, then it stands to reason that someone
aiming a gun out an upstairs window could command quite a view
of the whole area south of the compound. Also, if this farm
is Assassquin Plantation, the family seat of David Crafford
(See "History
of the Broaddus Flats Site" for more information),
one has to keep in mind that he was killed by Pamunkey Indians
in 1710.
As of this writing, excavators
are chasing a narrow (14”) and shallow (5”) trench
located west of the house and only 10’ from the west chimney
foundation. It is filled with a medium gray loam and lots of
burned artifacts, mostly from the 18th century. Recently I ran
across distinct evidence of a burned post in a new section of
the trench being uncovered—the first of its kind in over
12’ of the trench already excavated. The nature of this
feature as a whole (i.e. flat-bottomed with vertical sides and
running very straight) reminds me of a similar feature we excavated
at Flowerdew Hundred Plantation in the early 1970s. Here, the
builder’s of Gov. Yeardley’s “country house”
had added a kitchen wing (we surmised) to the main house, with
its foundation of stone and brick. Not having (or not caring
to procure) stone or brick for the subterranean footing, our
colonial builders had probably hewn square beams or sills, perhaps
of oak or chestnut, and placed them into their shallow trench
to serve as a quick foundation. Unless treated with brine, such
a foundation could not hope to survive more than ten or fifteen
years. At this point in our excavations, the trench at Assassquin
looks like just such a feature.
Date posted: 05.15.03
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