Site History

The Queenstown Courthouse site (18QU124) is located in Queenstown in Queen Anne’s County.  A courthouse erected in 1708 still stands on the property.  The county sold the parcel to John Robbins sometime between 1784-1786.  The courthouse was converted to a residence, and had a series of owners until it was purchased by Gerald Coursey in 1807.  He added a brick wing, likely used as a kitchen, to the original frame courthouse building, and may also have moved the courthouse from its first location elsewhere on the lot or nearby.  In 1910 a druggist, Wesley Chaires, purchased the property and added a frame wing that was used as a store.  The rest of the structure continued to be a dwelling.  Later owners and tenants used the commercial wing as a general store, a beer hall, a coffee shop/restaurant, a grocery/butcher shop, and a post office.  The Town of Queenstown purchased the courthouse in 1977 and began restoration efforts, including removal of the commercial wing.  The original courthouse was used as a museum, while the 19th-century kitchen wing was converted to offices for the town commissioners.

Archaeology

As part of the building restoration process, excavations were conducted in 1978 by the Archeological Society of Delaware under the direction of Edward Carly and Milton Barbehenn.  There are no known field records from the project, but there is a short summary report by Carly, as well as artifact slides.  Additional information comes from interviews conducted in 2009 with three project participants, including Barbehenn. 

The 1978 excavations covered six separate areas of the site, both under the building and in the yard.  Approximately 45 5x5' test units were excavated in stratigraphic and arbitrary levels.  Soils were screened through 1/2" mesh.  Various features were encountered, including stone and brick foundations, builders’ trenches, and a brick well at least 17’ deep.  Numerous 18th-century artifacts, from as early as the 1720s, were recovered.  Since the courthouse was moved from its original location, these objects were probably associated with one of the buildings uncovered during the excavations.  Materials from the early to mid-19th century were relatively rare, but the upper strata across the site contained large quantities of late 19th- and 20th-century artifacts. 

In 2010, John Milner Associates (JMA) was contracted by the Maryland State Highway Administration to process the artifacts.  The collection had been in private hands since 1978 and had not been cleaned, cataloged, or prepared for curation.  A total of 52,740 artifacts were cataloged, with 22,797 later discarded.  JMA prepared a report on the 1978 project and its collection using all the data that was still available.  Some artifacts were retained by the courthouse museum, while the rest were sent to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.

 Summary by Ed Chaney

References   

Archaeological collections from the Queenstown Courthouse site are owned by the Maryland Historical Trust and curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.