In our earlier posts we addressed the dado panels in the first floor south room of the stone side of the house. The significance of these dado panels became apparent when we discovered that the one on the east wall had been in place before the exterior stone wall behind it was reworked to create the rear bulkhead opening to the cellar underneath. In other words, this meant that we would know when that rear bulkhead entrance had been created in that stone wall if we could also come to a more certain conclusion about the age of the dado panels inside. In this article we will address the dado panels in greater depth and explain the significance of the evidence that has come to light since our last issue of this newsletter.

To begin, what is a dado panel? Dictionary definitions of the term dado basically say that it is from the Latin word datum, and it can refer to the architectural section of a pedestal between its base and crown. It also refers to the lower part of an interior room wall that has been decorated differently than the upper part of that same wall. In this case, these lower wall decorations consist of panels. Sometimes called wainscot paneling, they are situated under the dado rail (or chair rail) and above the baseboards. The panels we are dealing with at the Stone House were made by cutting skillfully crafted cabinet doors down to the length needed for the height of the panels and then nailing them together between the dado rail and the baseboard. Some of the graffiti we discovered on the reverse side of one of those dado panels most likely dates to the time when they were still serving as cabinet doors. Because the panels in question were repurposed materials from an earlier period, we need to rely on a more certain method to determine the date when they were constructed and installed. One of the most reliable methods of dating architectural work is the study of the nails that hold together the materials in question. As noted above, this paneling is constructed with nails.

Nail manufacturing technologies have developed quite rapidly over the time that has elapsed since the first part of the Stone House was built in the 1760s. Beginning in the Iron Age and on through until about 1800, nails were made by heating the end of a long, thin iron rod and hammering that section into the shape of a nail. The nail was then broken off the rod and finished with a tool that allowed the blacksmith to hammer the head of the nail into shape. These all-hand-made nails are sometimes called rose head nails because their planished heads resemble petals on a rose. (See Figure 1.) By the 1790s new technology was being developed that made it possible to mechanically cut and shear off a section of a thin bar of iron to form the shank of the nail. This machine operation reduced the amount a labor required to make the nail, but the head was still hammered out by hand. (See Figure 2.) By the beginning of the second decade of the 1800s, new technology was being developed that made it possible to employ two machine operations to manufacture an iron nail completely without skilled hand labor. This type of nail had a cut shank and a machine-stamped head, and it was used into the first decade of the 1900s. (See Figure 3.) The round wire nail that is still in use today was introduced in the 1890s. These nails are entirely manufactured by machine operations and are made of mild steel instead of iron.

 

Figure 1 – Hand-forged nails like this were made until circa 1800.

 

Figure 2 – Nails with machine-cut shanks and hand-forged heads like this were made from the 1790s until the 1820s.

 

Figure 3 – Nails made with machine-cut shanks and mechanically stamped heads like this were made from the 1810s to circa 1900.(Illustrations above are by the author after the work of Thomas D. Vasser, University of Vermont.)

 

We can see that the nails used to construct the dado panels are cut nails. The first nail we pulled is like Figure 2 above and formerly held the dado panel to the east wall of the stone side of the house. (See photo below.) As already noted, nails like this were made from the 1790s until they were replaced by cut nails with machine-stamped heads in the 1820s. If the other nails we find in the dado panels date to this same period, we will have the answers to a number of our questions about the history of the Stone House. In our next post we will have more to report.

Sometimes things survive on old buildings that would have been lost long ago to the elements if they had been left uncovered. Such is the case with some original siding that was left under the roof of the shed addition behind the log side of the house. This siding was historically called weatherboarding. Unlike clapboards, which were generally split, or riven, from sections of cross-sawn logs, weatherboards were sawn lengthwise out of long planks and then planed smooth on their outside surfaces. The weatherboards that survived on the Stone House have a decorative bead planed on the bottom edge of each board. (See image below.)

So how do we know that this siding dates to the restoration period of 1830? The nails. The majority of the nails that held these boards on the exterior wall of the log side of the house were hand forged. In other words, they were made by hand. These hand-forged nails date to around 1800 and before. (See image below.) After 1800 they were being replaced on the market by nails with a machine-cut shank and a hand-forged head. Those nails that were partly made by a machine operation were soon replaced around 1820 by nails that were manufactured completely by machine. A few other nails that were found holding the weatherboards were all machine made and were clearly from later campaigns of repair prior to the time when the shed addition was added in 1867. At that time these weatherboards were covered up and enclosed under the roof of that shed addition.

These weatherboards were originally whitewashed. (See image below.) Unlike historical paints, whitewash is a solution of water and lime (slaked lime or calcium hydroxide) as well as chalk dust (calcium carbonate) that was brushed on surfaces. While paint will eventually chip and flake off, whitewash simply dissolves and weathers away. Surface preparation for a new coat of whitewash is minimal compared to the preparation required for a new coat of paint. Often whitewash can be applied directly on a relatively clean, dry surface without any scraping, sanding or priming as is typically needed for a new coat of paint.

Because of the way whitewash dissolves as it is exposed to the weather, we also discovered evidence of a rear porch with a gabled roof that once existed over the back door of the log side of the structure. The “ghost” of that missing porch’s roof apex is in the surviving whitewash on these weatherboards. (See image below.) We are very happy that the workers who built the shed addition behind the log side did not remove these weatherboards.

Standing-seam rolled metal is today the most common vernacular roofing material in the Valley of Virginia. This was not always the case. From the time the earliest European settlers came to this region in the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth century until the decades after the Civil War, the most common way to roof a house or an outbuilding was with wooden shingles. Even so, how do we know that the Stone House had a wooden shingle roof on it in 1830? Apart from the original wooden roofing laths we have found nailed to the rafters in both sides of the house, there is other evidence that tells us that there was a wooden-shingle roof on the structure in 1830. When the owner of the Stone House Henry Jackson died in 1833, an inventory of his estate was taken for the court probate records. Among the things he owned at the time of his death listed in that inventory were two lots of roof shingles. One of these lots was estimated (or “supposed”) by the appraisers to contain 5,000 of what they called “Joint shingles.” The other lot was estimated to contain 1,000 of what they termed “lap shingles.” (We will discuss the difference between these two types of shingles below.) These shingles were among other building materials that Jackson owned when he died. In addition to this textual evidence we also have an historical photograph (see detail below) of the front of the log addition to the Stone House taken around 1885, when it was owned by the Argenbrights. It confirms that the structure still had a side-lap, wooden-shingle roof, though it was clearly in very rough shape at that time. It was probably about to be replaced with its first standing-seam rolled-metal panel roof.

The two types of shingles that Jackson owned when he died were the most commonly used in that era. Joint shingles are perhaps the ones we are most familiar with today. Also called “butt shingles,” they are laid flat on the roofing laths so that the side edges are closely abutting each other. They are nailed down in a pattern where the joints between the shingles are covered by the next course running above the one beneath. Sometimes their exposed ends are rounded to give a decorative “fish scale” appearance to the roof. (See image below.) This kind of shingle tends to be found most often in this region on structures that were associated with immigrants from Eastern Virginia who were of British extraction.

 

On the other hand, lap shingles are associated with those of German extraction. Architectural historians today often refer to the lap shingles used in this region by the name: long biaxially-tapered side-lap shingles. This term is more descriptive of their appearance. They are long. The ones we are having made will be at least thirty inches long. They are biaxially tapered, or wedge-shaped in profile, because they are split out of large red oak logs and then finished by shaving them smooth with a drawknife. The finished shingle is free of sapwood and core-heartwood.

The illustration above (based on a sketch first published in an article by Robert C. Bucher in Pennsylvania Folklife, Summer 1969) shows the way these side-lap shingles are installed. If things go as planned, we will begin to install a roof like this on the Stone House in the summer of 2019.

Earlier this year we promised to address some historical graffiti and the remaining questions raised though our forensic study of the stone side of the house. To understand how these remaining questions have been formulated, we need to first discuss the limits of what our study can reveal. It is worth noting that we have called these investigations a forensic study. Forensic science is normally used to help criminal investigators uncover and interpret legally admissible physical evidence from a crime scene and to determine what happened at that place. In large measure what we have been doing at the Stone House has been similar to what crime scene investigators do in their work. In both cases the effort involves uncovering evidence that has, at times, been deliberately concealed or inadvertently left behind by those involved in an action or an event. In both cases the deliberate, or unwitting, destruction of evidence as well as inconclusive discoveries or ambiguous physical details can lead to reasonable doubts about a proposed scenario of events. In the case of the Stone House, these remaining questions are not so much about if things were done, but more about when things were done.

In our previous update about our forensic work we also introduced what we discovered behind a dado panel on the east wall of the stone side of the structure. Behind this paneling we found that most of the plaster was missing and that the stones there had been re-laid after the dado paneling was installed. The essence of this discovery was that there is a definite relationship between the time the dado panel was installed (it coming first) and the subsequent date the rear stone wall above the bulkhead entrance was re-laid. The stones laid behind the dado paneling also implied that the rear window on the east wall had been raised higher in that wall so that the dado panel could fit below it. Therefore, theoretically, if we can date the time that the rear cellar entrance was created, we could also get a better idea about when the dado panels were installed. As we have addressed in the past, and again in our previous post, there is a stone in the exterior wall with “1828” pecked into its facial surface above that bulkhead entrance and to the left of that window. If this date stone tells us when that rear wall was reworked for the installation of the back bulkhead entrance, then we also can be relatively sure that the dado panels inside were in place by 1828.

The problem is that there is also graffiti on the back of one of the dado panels from the west (front or street-side) wall. Examination of all these panels has indicated that they were originally cabinet doors constructed with mortise-and-tenon joints. When they were made into dado panels, they were cut down and nailed together with machine-made cut nails that were typically used between 1820 and 1890. Some of the graffiti in question appears to date to the time when the dado panels were still being used as cabinet doors. One panel has the names of Ellis Long, R. Wells, and A. Pitman. These individuals were contemporaries who lived in Stephensburg during the later half of the 1700s and the early decades of the 1800s. There were two men with the name Ellis Long. The father who lived from 1758 to 1837 was likely the one that inscribed this graffiti. The “R. Wells” was most likely Richard Wells, who lived from 1779 to 1846, and the “A. Pitman” was most likely Andrew Pitman (the potter) who lived from 1760 to 1838. These were all prominent businessmen in Stephensburg at the same time that Henry Jackson owned the Stone House from 1802 to 1833.

The graffiti on another one of the old cabinet doors that makes up this same panel is less clear. It includes doodling and what appears to be a signature followed by a date. The most discernible part of this graffiti is what appears to be the year 1837 or 1887. (See images below.) Could this mean that the dado panels were installed after this inscription was made, or could this inscription date to a time when the panel was temporarily removed by a worker? We may never know, but we are continuing to work on deciphering this inscription in hopes that it may tell us more. We also continue to prepare to install a new roof. In our next post we will address what this new roof will be like.

We have finally begun the restoration work on the Stone House. On the 19th of June a crew from Dominion Traditional Building Group began the infill of a doorway that was knocked through the rear wall of the stone side of the structure during the 1960s. This doorway was created during Mildred Lee Grove’s period of ownership to give access to the second floor of the rear ell addition from the stairway in the original front section of the house. (See photo and floor plan insert below.)

Not only was this infill work necessary for bringing the house back to the way it looked in 1830, it was also required to stabilize the northeast corner of the stone side of the structure and serve as a foundation for the base of the roof structure frame.
The job was made slightly more complex by the fact that two floor joists had been cut off in the early twentieth century to make way for the current staircase . When the staircase is removed as part of the future interior restoration work, the floor joists will need to be replaced. Pockets were left in the masonry at the right spots for the replacement floor joists to rest.

The crew from Dominion Traditional Building Group was composed of Mike Ondrick (wearing the hat in the photo below), David Wood (without a hat in the photos below), as well as Glenn Courson, and Danny Mason.

We are grateful for their enthusiasm and professional skills. We would also like to thank Tim Winther, Dominion Traditional Building Group’s Senior Project Manager, for overseeing this undertaking.

The next steps we will take in the restoration will focus on the roof structure, the manufacture of shingles for the roof, and the chimney top. We will keep you up to date as we move forward.

Mr. Doug Reed has completed the majority of the fieldwork at the Stone House. Under Mr. Reed’s direction we carefully removed most of the twentieth century surface layers to expose what remains of the historic interior fabric in the stone side of the structure. One of the more interesting discoveries came on the last day of the fieldwork. In an effort to better understand the history of the dado paneling in the south room of the stone side Mr. Reed gently removed the longest section of that feature on the east wall of that room. Behind this paneling we found that most of the plaster was missing, and that the stones there had been re-laid after the dado paneling was installed. Some of the stones were still covered with the whitewash that was historically applied to the exterior of the house. (See photo below.)

Previously we had found original period plaster behind the dado paneling on the opposite (west) wall, and some original period plaster remained under the top of the southern end of the panel we removed from the east wall. The inferences we can draw from this discovery have implications for telling us when the dado paneling was installed. The wall with the missing plaster is directly above the rear bulkhead entrance to the cellar. The construction of that rear bulkhead entrance involved opening a hole in the foundation wall by strategically removing stones and installing a wooden lintel over the new entrance. Mr. Reed had noted in his initial investigations of the stone side of the structure that the exterior wall over that rear bulkhead entrance appears to be re-laid by a different set of hands than the ones that built the rest of the stone side of the house. There is also a stone in that section of reconstructed wall with the numbers “1828” picked into its face. (See photo below.)

We have reason to believe that this is the year that this stone work was done in relation to the construction of the rear bulkhead entrance. If this is true then we know that the dado paneling was in place by the year 1830, the period to which we are restoring the Stone House. The nails used to construct the dado paneling are the type that date to as early as the 1820s.

We have also uncovered more evidence that sheds light on the stairway that once ran up the south wall of the stone side. The scars in the plaster left by this stairway are plainly visible. (See photo below.)

The modern flooring has also been removed and we have exposed the original floor boards. The marks on those floorboards reveal the place where the stairway landing was located and how wide that stairway was. Additionally the dents and stains on the original floorboards have confirmed the location and configuration of the vertical board wall that was originally constructed in order to divided the first floor into two rooms.

While the interior forensic work has reviled many clues that are helping us develop an idea of how the Stone House looked in 1830, there are still unanswered questions that stem from inconclusive evidence. In our future posts we will address some of these remaining questions as well as the historical graffiti we discovered behind the dado paneling. Ultimately, we hope to have more answers than questions.

This year has been a busy one with our work on the Stone House. So busy that we forgot to include some updates here on the website that did make it into our newsletters.

In the summer of 2016 we announced the discovery of the remaining foundation walls that belonged to a detached kitchen that once stood behind the Stone House. This detached kitchen was most likely built in the 1780s, when tavern keeper Peter Upp owned the property, and it was built at the same time as the north log addition on the Stone House. That detached kitchen had stood until sometime after it was mentioned in an 1843 deed that subdivided the property. Until we discovered the foundation walls of the detached kitchen, we were operating under a theory that a timber-frame shed addition that was once attached to the rear of the stone side of the house was also there on the back of the house during the same time period. As we stated last summer, the big surprise came when we dug the test unit in the ground where we expected to find a stone pier that formerly supported the northeastern corner of that timber- frame shed addition. Instead of finding that pier we discovered the southwestern corner of the detached kitchen’s foundation wall. It is located in such a way that it disproved the theory that the shed addition was there on the back of the Stone House as early as 1830. In fact, it is now clear that the timber-frame shed addition postdates our restoration period by as many as fifteen years. This is because two buildings cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and we know the kitchen was still standing on that spot as late as 1843, when the property was subdivided.

Back in 2014 we had saved that timber-frame shed addition and left it standing on the same spot where it had been moved in the early 1900s. (See photo below.) Back around 1910 it was incorporated into the rear ell addition that was being built behind the stone side of the house. When we removed that ell addition in 2014, we envisioned restoring this timber frame shed addition back to its original place and reattaching it to the rear of the stone side of the house. That is no longer the plan.

In the spring of 2017 we carefully dismantled this timber-frame shed addition and stored it away with its parts labeled and numbered. This work was done by Mr. Bill Wine (in the images below), principal of Historic Restorations, LLC of Woodstock, Virginia. Mr. Wine and his crew had been involved with the earlier work in 2014 to remove the additions behind the log side of the house and the other parts of the ell addition behind the stone side.

The stones from the foundations of the additions are all being saved on site so that they can eventually be reused during the restoration project. The ground area that was just uncovered may yield more information when future archeological studies are conducted. We are keeping the site covered to protect these undiscovered resources of historical evidence.

 

Late last summer we resumed work to answer the final questions about the 1830 appearance of the stone side of the Stone House. In the autumn 2015 we discussed concerns that were raised by Mr. Doug Reed, our historic structure consultant. Mr. Reed had noted that the size of the openings for the first-floor windows and doors were too tall and narrow for what was typically common during the time when the Stone House was originally constructed. At the end of 2016 we revisited these questions and also considered how the first-floor window to the right (south) of the front door was at some time lengthened downward and turned into a doorway. Since then we have received the report on the archeological investigations that were conducted in 2016. In our last issue we recounted how the two test units excavated under that window, on the spot where there used to be a cellar bulkhead entrance, showed that the artifacts discovered in the bottom undisturbed archeological strata dated “from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.” In other words, the front bulkhead opening continued to exist into the early 1900s, when it was filled in again with dirt. With this fact in mind we now know that the first-floor window to the right (south) of the front door was still a window in the 1830 period. This is because the only way to make that window into a door was to lengthen it downward. To do that they filled in the cellar bulkhead entrance and cut its wooden lintel. Otherwise the lintel would be in the way of the lower half of the door opening that was being created. (See image below.) This also means that the front bulkhead entrance to the cellar was most likely open during the 1830 period and, therefore, it will need to be recreated in our restoration plan for the Stone House.

On the 14th of September 2017 Mr. Doug Reed resumed his study of the Stone House with a renewed examination of the building’s exterior and interior structural features. He began by refamiliarizing himself with the house and the bits of physical evidence that remain from the earliest period of the structure’s existence. One of the best ways to date architectural features is old hardware. And when it comes to window openings, one of the easiest ways to determine the age of the window frame in that opening is by examining the nails that hold it together. One of our most important recent discoveries tells us that the rear window on the stone side dates to the earliest period of the structure’s history. This is because Mr. Reed discovered hand-forged “T” head nails with “spoon bits” (that date to the eighteenth century) in the oldest molding of that window frame. (See photos below.) To make these discoveries Mr. Reed must gently pry wooden molding apart from the walls to which they are attached. (See photo below.) In turn, the nails are slowly revealing the story of the Stone House and what it looked like around 1830.

The work on the Stone House has progressed and we have expanded our study of the interior of the stone side of the structure to include the removal of plaster to look for clues inside the walls. Our historic structure consultant, Mr. Doug Reed, calls this work “above ground archeology.” Similar to the archeology we conducted in the ground behind and around the outside of the Stone House, this forensic investigation of the structure’s interior walls involves the careful removal of layers to reveal trace evidence of past renovations and alterations.

One of the features we are trying to learn more about is a stairway that was once located along the south wall of the first-floor room in the stone side of the house. Mr. Reed, with the assistance of our President Butch Fravel, carefully chipped away the newest layers of plaster to uncover the trace evidence of that stairway. (See photos below.) By carefully removing the plaster around and above the first-floor window openings in the front of the building Mr. Reed has been able to examine bedding mortar in the joints between the stones, and the hand-hewn wooden lintels over the openings. The verdict is that both the first-floor windows and the front door opening are in their original locations and they have not been widened.

On the 1st of December 2017 we also discovered a baseboard in the south first floor room fastened with nails dating to circa 1810. (See image below.) This baseboard had been spliced in the middle and is located below the spot where the old stairway used to be on that wall. The nails in this baseboard may be a clue in helping us date the installation of that missing stairway.

There is more to come. Keep checking back with us.

The report from Rivanna Archaeological Services (“R.A.S.”) has come to us and we want to share some of the things we have learned from it. Those readers who have been able to visit our museum and see the exhibit on those 2016 excavations that opened during this year’s Newtown Heritage Festival have viewed some of the artifacts that were discovered. They will also know that the majority of them were ceramic shards. These supporting quotations from the R.A.S. report give us a sense of the amounts of those materials.

Ceramics recovered from the 2016 investigations were classified into four broad ware types, coarse earthenwares (n = 2,263), refined earthenwares (n = 2,502), stonewares (n = 112), and porcelains (n = 86). A total of 4,963 pieces of tableware and utilitarian ceramic vessels were recovered from all units.

The report went on to say the following:

Coarse earthenwares composed 45.59% of the entire ceramic collection. Of the coarse earthenwares, redwares composed 96.24% (n = 2178), tin-glazed earthenwares 3.05% (n = 69), and slab or tile ware 0.71% (n = 16). Redwares were ubiquitous throughout the sites and in nearly every unit.

This abundance of redware was not surprising. Stephensburg had two potters in the early period, the brothers Andrew and John Pitman. They mainly produced redware pottery in their shops as did other potters in towns around the region.

By far the most important discoveries outlined in the R.A.S. report were the ones that told us about the architectural history of the Stone House, and its main outbuilding, the detached kitchen mentioned in the 1843 deed that subdivided the property. While the test units that were excavated around the exterior doorways of the log addition were inconclusive, we had more success with the effort to discover when the front bulkhead entrance to the cellar under the stone side was closed off and backfilled. (See image below.)

In the September 2016 issue of this newsletter we told of how we hoped to discover undisturbed soil at the bottom of these test units (numbered 20 and 21 in the diagram below) that would hold artifacts dating to the time when this entrance was closed off. The report stated that the artifacts discovered in the bottom undisturbed strata dated “from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.” In other words, the front bulkhead opening continued to exist well into the early 1900s.

This diagram from the R.A.S. report shows the floorplans of the Stone House with all its additions. Superimposed with dotted lines are the locations of the detached kitchen (based on its foundations discovered in 2016) and the original location of the timber frame shed addition (based on its foundation piers discovered in 2015 and 2016, and plaster remains on the east wall of the stone structure). The way these two structures overlap in Test Unit 22 illustrates how we know that the detached kitchen was gone before the timber frame shed addition was added to the stone structure. This graphic helps show the complexity of it all.

In our December 3^rd, 2015 post we introduced the question of how the fenestration (window and door openings) in the front of stone side of the house may have been altered over time. In that article, which was titled “Fenestration of the Stone Side” we addressed the issue in some detail. The following except from that article sums up the problems:

So why do we still have concerns about the original size of the window and door openings in the stone side of the structure? The short answer is that they are now too tall and narrow. Our historic structures consultant Doug Reed was the first to notice that something did not fit the pattern. “While the two front first floor windows do not have any readily apparent exterior alterations, the current sizes of the openings do not support any typical size 18th century window known in the region.” He went on to explain the following in the current draft of the historic structure report on the Stone House:

The width of the current opening dictated the use of 6½” to 7” wide glass panes. The width of the sash and glass was also dictated by the rough masonry opening allowing 3½” to 4” wide jambs. For the height to fill the full opening without alterations, a 2” taller piece of glass in ratio to the width again dictated the use of 6½” x 8½” wide glass or the wider glass dimension may have been 7” x 9”. Using those height measurements the sash set that best fit the tall vertical size of the existing rough openings was 9 panes of glass over 9 panes of glass.

Mr. Reed then pointed out that while nine over nine double hung sash windows were possible to make during the period, they would not have been found on a little stone house built in the backcountry of Virginia during the 1760s. He also noted that it was unlikely that these kind of undersized glass panes would be used in a nine over nine double hung sash window, and that it is likely that the rough masonry openings for these front windows were originally shorter. Additionally, he observed that the rough opening for the front door was too narrow for what you would expect to see for a circa 1765 doorway.

To answer the question of whether or not these window and door openings were altered, and if so, how and when the alterations took place, we need to look behind the surface plaster and trim on the inside of these openings. In 2017 one of our first priorities for the project will be answering these questions. We will be working again with Mr. Reed to hopefully come to some conclusions about what the stone side of the structure looked like in 1830.

Additionally, we also know that the first floor window to the right of the front door was at some time lengthened downward and turned into a doorway. When this was done the workers cut the wooden lintel of the old front bulkhead opening leading down into the cellar. This cut lines up with the window opening in the stone work that was used to create the former doorway opening. (See images above and below.) After it had been used as a doorway for a period of time it was altered to the way it is now and used again for its former purpose as a window opening. This is a great example of the complexity of the situation we are facing with the fenestration on the front of the stone side of the house. After these questions are answered we will be able to move forward with the restoration of the exterior of the house in 2018.

After the summer dust settled, we had Rivanna Archaeological Services return on the 8th of August to finish their work at the site for this year. This time they were joined by the other principal of the firm, Benjamin Ford, PhD, in addition to Steve Thompson and Nick Bon-Harper, who previously worked with us in June. Ben and Nick focused on the two test units in the front of the stone side of the house where there was once a bulkhead opening to the basement of that original part of the structure. At the same time Steve Thompson, who had led the principle phase of Rivanna’s excavations in June, worked with Executive Director & Curator Byron Smith in the rear yard behind the log side. There in the area behind the log side of the house Steve supervised our volunteer, Mr. Dick Sandy, who operated his backhoe loader to strip away some of the fill dirt over the kitchen site, and regrade the surface behind the house to facilitate drainage. (See images below.)

Part of this job involved filling in holes and a trench that had previously been dug by museum staff to uncover the old bathroom plumbing and sewer line. This infill work was done to prevent erosion which could threaten the stratigraphy of future archeology at the site. The area behind the log side is now prepared until the next time we employ Rivanna to come back and finish the next phase of the work. That final phase will involve completely uncovering the remaining foundation walls and the floor of the kitchen so that we will be able to make a plan to reconstruct that structure.

Meanwhile, in the front of the stone side of the house, Ben and Nick completed the excavation of the two test units to expose the original eighteenth century stone stairs that formerly gave access to the cellar under the stone side of the house. (See photo below.)

Our purpose in studying these two units was to discover (if possible) the time period when this bulkhead doorway was closed off. This could hopefully be accomplished by examining the artifacts that came out of the undisturbed soil that was used to backfill the stairwell after the bulkhead was closed off. In theory, discovering artifacts dating to the period after the 1830s would indicate that this bulkhead opening would likely have been there in the year 1830, which is the target date of our restoration of the house. The challenge associated with these two test units was in the way they had been disturbed by previous activity. During the mid-twentieth century a water line was installed and a pipe was laid in a trench where we excavated the south test unit. (This pipe is visible in the photo above.) Later in the twentieth century we set our museum’s street sign in a posthole next to the water line. Thus, the majority of the soil coming out of the top layers of these units was useless for our purposes. We can only reasonably assume that the very bottom soil at the base of the stone stairs was undisturbed. The artifacts discovered therein at the bottom of the stairs should tell us if the bulkhead was filled in after 1830. Rivanna staff are processing those artifacts now. We hope to have the results of their study by the end of the year. We will let you know those results and other news in the next posts.