New Discoveries at Jamestown Part 1

New Discoveries at Jamestown.

by John L. Cotter.

J. Paul Hudson.

Preface

Jamestown, a name of first rank among historic names, saw the birth of English America. Here on an island in the James River in the heart of tidewater Virginia the English carved a settlement out of the wilderness. It grew from a rude palisaded fort into a busy community and then into a small town that enjoyed many of the comforts of daily living. For 13 years (until 1620) Virginia was the only English colony on the American mainland. Jamestown served this colony as its place of origin and as its capital for 92 years--from 1607 to 1699.

After its first century of prominence and leaders.h.i.+p, "James Towne"

entered a long decline, precipitated, in 1700, by the removal of the seat of government to Williamsburg. Its residents drifted away, its streets grew silent, its buildings decayed, and even its lots and former public places became cultivated fields. Time pa.s.sed and much was forgotten or obscured. So it was when it became a historic area, in part, in 1893, and when the whole island became devoted to historical purposes in 1934.

Since these dates, the a.s.sociation for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the National Park Service have worked toward the preservation of all that still exists of old Jamestown, and are dedicated to learning its story more completely. Thus the American people can more fully understand and enjoy their historic heritage of Jamestown. A great deal of study along many lines has been required and much more is still needed to fill the many gaps. Libraries have been searched for pictures, doc.u.ments, and plans. Land records have been carefully scrutinized and old existing landmarks studied.

Seventeenth-century buildings and objects still surviving in England, America, and elsewhere have been viewed as well as museum collections. A key part of the search has been the systematic excavation of the townsite itself, in order to bring to light the information and objects long buried there. This is the aspect of the broad Jamestown study that is told in this publication, particularly as its relates to the material things, large and small, of daily life in Jamestown in the 17th century.

These valuable objects are a priceless part of the Jamestown that exists today. Collectively they form one of the finest groups of such early material that has been a.s.sembled anywhere. Although most are broken and few are intact, they would not be traded for better preserved and more perfect examples that do exist elsewhere. These things were the property and the possessions of the men and women who lived, worked, and died at Jamestown. It was because of these people, who handled and used them in their daily living, and because of what they accomplished, that Jamestown is one of our best remembered historic places.

April 6, 1956 CHARLES E. HATCH, JR.

Colonial National Historical Park

PART ONE

Exploration: The Ground Yields Many Things

By JOHN L. COTTER Supervising Archeologist, Colonial National Historical Park

"As in the arts and sciences the first invention is of more consequence than all the improvements afterward, so in kingdoms, the first foundation, or plantation, is of more n.o.ble dignity and merit than all that followeth."

--LORD BACON

In the Summer of 1934 a group of archeologists set to work to explore the site of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown Island, Va. For the next 22 years the National Park Service strove--with time out for wars and intervals between financial allotments--to wrest from the soil of Jamestown the physical evidence of 17th-century life. The job is not yet complete. Only 24 out of 60 acres estimated to comprise "James Citty" have been explored; yet a significant amount of information has been revealed by trowel and whiskbroom and careful recording.

By 1956 a total of 140 structures--brick houses, frame houses with brick footings, outbuildings, workshops, wells, kilns, and even an ice storage pit--had been recorded. To help unravel the mystery of landholdings (sometimes marked by ditches), 96 ditches of all kinds were located, and hundreds of miscellaneous features from post holes to brick walls were uncovered. Refuse pits were explored meticulously, since before the dawn of history man has left his story in the objects he discarded.

When archeology at Jamestown is mentioned, the question is often asked, why was it necessary to treat so famous a historic site as an archeological problem at all? Isn't the story finished with the accounts of John Smith's adventures, the romance of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, the "starving time," the Indian ma.s.sacre of 1622, Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion against Governor Berkeley, and the establishment of the first legislative a.s.sembly?

The archeologist's answer is that the real drama of daily life of the settlers--the life they knew 24 hours a day--is locked in the unwritten history beneath humus and tangled vegetation of the island. Here a bra.s.s thimble from the ruins of a cottage still retains a pellet of paper to keep it on a tiny finger that wore it 300 years ago. A bent halberd in an abandoned well, a discarded sword, and a piece of armor tell again the pa.s.sing of terror of the unknown, after the Indians retreated forever into the distant hills and forests. Rust-eaten axes, wedges, mattocks, and saws recall the struggle to clear a wilderness. The simple essentials of life in the first desperate years have largely vanished with traces of the first fort and its frame buildings. But in later houses the evidence of Venetian gla.s.s, Dutch and English delftware, pewter, and silver eating utensils, and other comforts and little luxuries tell of new-found security and the beginning of wealth. In all, a half-million individual artifacts at the Jamestown museum represent the largest collection from any 17th-century colonial site in North America.

But archeologists have found more than objects at Jamestown. They sought to unravel the mystery of that part of the first settlement which disappeared beneath the eroding current of the James River during the past 300 years. It has always been known that the island in the 17th century was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus extending to Gla.s.shouse Point, where a gla.s.smaking venture took place in 1608. Over this isthmus the "Greate Road" ran, and its traces have been discovered on the island as far as the brick church tower. As the isthmus disappeared at the close of the 17th century, the river continued to erode the island headward and build it up at its downstream end, so that the western and southern sh.o.r.es where the first settlement had been built, were partly destroyed. Thus, the first fort site of 1607, of which no trace has been found on land, is thought to have been eaten away, together with the old powder magazine and much early 17th-century property fronting on the river.

In a series of extensive tests for any possible trace of the 1607 fort still remaining on land, several incidental discoveries of importance were made. One was an Indian occupation site beneath a layer of early 17th-century humus, which, in turn, was covered by the earthen rampart of a Confederate fort of 1861. This location is marked today by a permanent "in-place" exhibit on the sh.o.r.e near the old church tower.

Here, in a cut-away earth section revealing soil zones from the present to the undisturbed clay, evidence of 350 years of history fades away into prehistory.

Within the enclosure of this same Confederate fort was found a miraculously preserved pocket of 17th-century debris marking the site of the earliest known armorer's forge in British America.

Just beyond, upriver, lie ruins of the Ludwell House and the Third and Fourth Statehouses. In 1900-01, Col. Samuel H. Yonge, a U.S. Army Engineer and a keen student of Jamestown history, uncovered and capped these foundations after building the original seawall. A strange discovery was made here in 1955 while the foundations were being examined by archeologists for measured drawings. Tests showed that no less than 70 human burials lay beneath the statehouse walls, and an estimated 200 more remain undisturbed beneath the remaining structures or have been lost in the James River. Here may be the earliest cemetery yet revealed at Jamestown--one so old that it was forgotten by the 1660's when the Third Statehouse was erected. It is, indeed, quite possible that these burials, some hastily interred without coffins, could date from the "starving time" of 1609-10, when the settlers strove to dispose of their dead without disclosing their desperate condition to the Indians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMESTOWN EXPLORATION TRENCHES OF 1955 FROM THE AIR.

LANDMARKS ARE THE "OLD CYPRESS" IN THE RIVER, UPPER LEFT, THE TERCENTENARY MONUMENT, AND THE STANDING RUIN OF THE 18TH-CENTURY AMBLER HOUSE.]

The highlight of archeological discoveries at Jamestown is undoubtedly the long-forgotten buildings themselves, ranging from mansions to simple cottages. Since no accurate map of 17th-century "James Citty" is known to survive, and as only a few land tracts, often difficult to adjust to the ground, have come down to us, archeologists found that the best way to discover evidence was to cast a network of exploratory trenches over the area of habitation.

During its whole century of existence, the settlement was never an integrated town. The first frame houses quickly rotted away or succ.u.mbed to frequent fires. Brick buildings were soon erected, but probably not twoscore ever stood at one time during the 17th century.

Bearing in mind that the ma.s.sive church tower is the only 17th-century structure remaining above ground today, and the only building whose ident.i.ty was therefore never lost, you will find only one other identified with positive a.s.surance--the Ludwell House--Third and Fourth Statehouses row. The remaining 140 structures so far discovered by excavating have no clear-cut ident.i.ty with their owners. To complicate matters more, bricks from many burned or dismantled houses were salvaged for reuse, sometimes leaving only vague soil-shadows for the archeologist to ponder. From artifacts a.s.sociated with foundation traces, relative datings and, usually, the use of the structure can be deduced from physical evidence. Unless a contemporaneous map is someday found, we shall know little more than this about the houses at Jamestown except for the testimony of a.s.sorted hardware, ceramics, gla.s.sware, metalware, and other imperishable reminders of 17-century arts and crafts.

Churches

The first church service at Jamestown was held under a piece of sailcloth in May 1607. The first frame church, constructed within the palisades, burned with the entire first fort in January 1608, and was eventually replaced by another frame structure after the fort was rebuilt. The exact date of the first church to stand on a brick foundation is uncertain, possibly 1639. Brick foundation traces, uncovered in 1901 by John Tyler, Jr., a civil engineer who volunteered his services for the a.s.sociation for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, lie behind the free-standing brick church tower which remains the only standing ruin today. The modern brick structure and roof enclose and protect the footing evidence of the walls of two separate churches and a tile chancel flooring. Indication of fire among these foundations was noted by Tyler.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MANSION STRUCTURE OR PUBLIC BUILDING DATING FROM THE SECOND QUARTER OF THE 17TH CENTURY. REBUILT ONCE AND BURNED ABOUT THE TIME OF BACON'S REBELLION, 1676.]

Mansions

Despite official urgings that they build substantial town houses on Jamestown Island, the first successful planters often preferred to build on their holdings away from the capitol, once the Indian menace had pa.s.sed. Only 2 houses at Jamestown, designed for single occupancy, have over 900 square feet of foundation area.

One was either a stately residence or a public building (area 1,350 square feet) located near Pitch and Tar Swamp, just east of the Jamestown Visitor Center. Archeological evidence indicates that this structure was first completed before the middle of the 17th century. It was later reconstructed and enlarged about the beginning of the last quarter, possibly during Bacon's Rebellion of 1676. Unmistakably, it burned.

The second structure was a smaller (1,200 square feet), but imposing, house located near the present sh.o.r.eline, considerably downriver. One of the features of this second mansion was a bas.e.m.e.nt in the center of which was sunk a square, brick-lined recess, 3.3 feet on a side and 2.7 feet deep. Among the many wine bottle fragments in this recess were 3 bottle seals--1 with "WW" and 2 with "FN" stamped on them. Whether or not this mansion can be a.s.sociated with Sir Francis Nicholson, the last governor resident at Jamestown (who moved the capital to Williamsburg), we do not know. Artifacts found in the refuse indicate this house was dismantled, not burned, shortly before or after the turn of the 17th century. The mystery of the little brick-lined recess is not entirely solved, but it is probable that here was a primitive cooler, deep below the house, in which perishable foods or wines were stored.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMESTOWN HOUSE TYPES: SIMPLE FRAME, HALF-TIMBER, BRICK, AND ROW. (Conjectural sketches by Sidney E. King.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXCAVATED FOUNDATION OF A LATE 17TH-CENTURY PROTOTYPE OF THE BALTIMORE AND PHILADELPHIA ROW HOUSES. SIX FAMILIES COULD HAVE LIVED HERE.]

Row Houses

Although row houses--a continuous row of joined family residences on unit foundations--were a common city feature in 17th-century England, apparently they did not become popular at Jamestown. But the brick foundation of one true multiple-family unit has been uncovered, and two others approach this category, thus providing the true precedent for the row houses which came to characterize miles of Baltimore and Philadelphia streets, and are a familiar pattern of some modern duplex apartment units.

This Jamestown row house is probably the most impressive foundation on the island. It is 16 feet long and 20 feet wide (inside measurement), situated east of the Tercentenary Monument, facing south, well back from the river and "the back streete." A cellar and a great fireplace terminate the east end, and 9 other fireplaces are evident in 4 main divisions, which may have housed one family or more in each division.

Since artifact evidence relates it to the last quarter of the 17th century, and possibly the beginning of the 18th, there would seem little possibility of the row house having served as a public building or a tavern. There is some evidence that at least part of the structure burned.

Two other foundations might be cla.s.sed as row houses, but are less clearly delineated. One is the Last Statehouse Group of five units in the APVA grounds.[1] The other multiple house is a 3-unit building midway between the brick church and Orchard Run. This structure generally fits the description of the First Statehouse in its 3-unit construction and dimensions, and has long been thought to be the original Statehouse building. The structure, however, is as close to the present sh.o.r.eline as the First Statehouse is recorded to have been in 1642--a puzzling coincidence, if the factor of erosion is taken into consideration.

[Footnote 1: After the Third Statehouse burned, it was replaced on the same foundations by the Fourth (and last) Statehouse built on Jamestown Island, which burned in 1698. The Fifth Statehouse, now reconstructed at Williamsburg, also burned, continuing an unhappy tradition that includes the destruction of the National Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton in 1814 and the Virginia Statehouse at Richmond in 1865.]

Single Brick Houses

These were once supposed to have been very common at Jamestown, but are represented by only 12 foundations, not all of which have been completely excavated. Like the other excavated structures, if these houses can be related to the owners.h.i.+p of the land tracts on which they once stood, we may someday know more of their possible ident.i.ty.

Frame Houses