THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 19, 1996 TAG: 9601190597
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
A construction project that started as a simple entrance to a Navy communications outpost is yielding a compelling look at how early settlers deep in southern Chesapeake went about their daily lives.
Archaeologists scraping their way through layers of wet clay have turned up what they believe to be the remains of an 18th century homestead.
Sparse clues - especially a handful of pottery shards and an enigmatic little packing seal from England - might prove that early farmers who tilled the land at the very brink of the Dismal Swamp were surprisingly well-connected to the commercial markets of the Eastern Seaboard and Europe, the project's director said Thursday.
Even today, the area in question, off Ballahack Road near the North Carolina border, is largely rural. To imagine living there in the 1700s is to imagine a lonely, insular life. But artifacts unearthed there might soften such a harsh judgment, said Dr. Michael Hornum, the archaeologist directing the dig.
``One of the things we're finding that's pretty incredible,'' Hornum said, ``is their connections to the regional markets and even across the sea.
``It indicates they were of some wealth and influence and had substantial ability to get the things they needed.''
The fragments of ornate blue-and-white dinnerware, broken white-china bowls and stemmed glassware date from 1760-70 through the early 1800s, he said. They probably belonged to one of two families: the Happers, several of whom owned large plots of the land; or Andrew MacPherson, who, according to early records, leased land from the Happers in 1798.
Among the more intriguing finds, Hornum said, was a dime-sized sliver of lead discovered in the past few days. It appears to be a type of seal used on packing crates. Clearly stamped on it is the word ``Leeds,'' indicating it came from England.
That could indicate, he said, that even families working farms on the pine-forest periphery of the Dismal Swamp had access to direct shipment of ceramic wares from England.
To an archaeologist, small clues like the Leeds seal are as exciting as a fresh fingerprint might be to a homicide detective.
``Yes, it is fascinating,'' Hornum said, grinning, his pants legs splattered with mud from a morning's work at the rain-soaked dig. Though his doctoral dissertation and early work centered on ancient sites in Israel and the Mediterranean region, he confessed to having become intrigued by the American Colonial period.
In tracking historical records, Hornum learned that the Ballahack Road area already was fairly well populated in the years just after the Revolutionary War.
``In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, things were a lot more civilized than we might have guessed,'' he said.
Hornum and a dozen archaeologists from a Maryland company, working under contract to the Navy, have cleared 8,600 square meters of land to a depth of 6 to 7 inches. That is below the ``plow zone,'' where constant tilling over two centuries would have broken up surface artifacts. Corn stubble covers the fields today, and a super-secret Navy communications facility lies as a backdrop.
Digging deeper, where artifacts or off-color soil tipped them off, the researchers identified two rectangular areas believed to be where a house and an outbuilding stood. What appears to have been a root cellar, partially lined in rough-fired brick, was uncovered at the house site. Numerous trash pits within just a few yards have yielded a lot of the broken pottery. At the base of one pit they uncovered what appears to have been a well.
``We've found a lot of pipes, an awful lot of tobacco pipes,'' Hornum said. ``We don't know yet if they were growing tobacco, but they sure were smoking a lot of it.''
Records show that the Happer family at one point held 24 slaves, indicating a substantial farming operation.
William Henry Happer Sr., an 81-year-old Chesapeake resident, is an elder of the family of African-Americans by that name still living in the region. He said Thursday he had met but one white Happer in his lifetime, and that was many years ago.
``Yes,'' Happer said, ``he was a descendant of the slave masters, don't you know. He'd come back to look up some old family graveyards.'' Happer could not tell if his family was directly connected to the Ballahack Road farm, but he said generations of his people had lived in that southern region of Chesapeake.
Another branch of the Happer family owned a house farther down Ballahack Road that was built in 1768 and is still standing, Hornum said. Later records show that many of the family members moved to Portsmouth and several died there.
All this digging, scraping and researching began when the Navy, in 1994, wanted to build a new entrance into Naval Security Group Activity Northwest, a high-security intelligence base that monitors communications traffic from around the world and is the nerve center for the Atlantic Fleet.
Under the National Historic Preservation Act, a federal project must first determine if any significant historical site might be disturbed in the process. An early survey yielded signs of a long-forgotten settlement there.
Hornum said his crew hopes to finish work at the site this week so the project can go forward. They will map their many finds - the home site, outbuildings, wells, trash pits and fence-post holes - to learn how early farms were laid out.
They will analyze bones and teeth from animals to learn what was living in the barnyard. From seeds, charcoal, burned nut shells - even from the ratio of broken plates to broken bowls - they hope to get a sense of the settlers' daily diet. There's a little tobacco left in one of the pipes, so they'll study that as well.
The lab work, Hornum said, will go on for months. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos RICHARD L. DUNSTON, The Virginian-Pilot
At the project's site Thursday, left, David Olney, front, Liza Rupp,
and Mike McGrath search for more artifacts. The dig at the Navy
communications site is revealing a lot of broken pottery, above, and
``an awful lot of tobacco pipes,'' the project's director said.
Map
KEYWORDS: ARTIFACTS ARCHAEOLOGY by CNB