Port Tobacco (18CH94)
Site History
Port Tobacco (18CH94) is the site of a 17th- and 18th-century colonial town and contact period trading post, located in the town of Port Tobacco in Charles County, Maryland. The site also contains Late Archaic, and Early, Middle, and Late Woodland period pre-contact components.
The town of Port Tobacco encompasses about 50 acres of woods, yards, and mowed fields and lies on the east side of the Port Tobacco River, south of the junction of MD 6 and Chapel Point Road. Three restored 18th-century dwellings survive in the town, as well as a late-19th-century one-room schoolhouse and two 19th-century farmhouses. The courthouse is a 1970 recreation of the 1819-1892 courthouse. Although no longer navigable, the Port Tobacco River was accessible to boat traffic in the colonial period.
Archaeological Investigations
Port Tobacco has been the site of numerous archaeological investigations since the 1930s. Very little documentation exists for many of the early excavations. Graham conducted excavation of Native American ossuaries at Warehouse Point in 1935 (Graham 1935) and Curry (1999) summarized Graham's findings. It appears that all excavations within the town of Port Tobacco used site number 18CH94 until excavations in 2007, when James Gibb began to use 18CH765, the site number assigned to the Burch House. It was also during 2007 when more intensive excavations began to take place under the aegis of the Port Tobacco Archaeological Project.
In the late 1960s, the Society for the Preservation of Port Tobacco, led by John Wearmouth, excavated around former courthouse location prior to reconstruction of the building. Around 1970, John Wearmouth conducted excavations of the St. Charles (a.k.a. Brawner) Hotel site, including excavation of the hotel’s cellar. Few notes were taken and no records survived this work. In 1970 and 1971, the Southwestern Chapter of the Archeological Society of Maryland assisted the Society for the Preservation of Port Tobacco excavate 150 feet of test trenches around the reconstructed Statehouse.
It appears the next excavations at Port Tobacco did not take place until 2006, when Gibb Archaeological Consulting was contracted by the Society for the Restoration of Port Tobacco to conduct a Phase I archaeological survey of the Burch House property prior to drainage control work on the property. The work consisted of topographic mapping, 20 shovel test pits at 20-foot intervals, and sod stripping from a brick foundation and pavement on the west side of the building. This work resulted in the recording of the Burch House site as 18CH765.
In 2007, Gibb Archaeological Consulting conducted a Phase I survey of approximately 9 acres in the southern half of the village site of Port Tobacco. Archaeologists excavated 355 shovel test pits at 25-foot intervals, and two 3x3-foot test units. All of the findings from this project were given the site number assigned to the Burch House site (18CH765), although most of the artifacts were not from the Burch House property (of the two 3x3-foot test units, one was excavated within the Burch House site). All other fieldwork done during the 2007 field session was conducted on 18CH94, possibly confusing future researchers.
The close-interval testing in 2007 of the Compton, Holt, and Jamieson family lots (18CH94), as well as that of the Burch House (18CH765), revealed rich artifact deposits, complex stratigraphy, architectural features, and aboriginal sites. Initial results suggest that Native Americans occupied the banks of the Port Tobacco River during the Woodland periods, and possibly earlier. The distribution of precontact material, chiefly lithics and pottery with some fire-cracked rock, suggests one or more shifts in the river's course. The distributions of colonial and antebellum ceramics, coupled with distributions of brick, handwrought nails, and machine-cut nails, suggest stability in the spatial organization of the village, with 18th-century sites occupied well into the 19th century. As many as 20 building sites have been identified and a number of them can be characterized with confidence as 18th-century buildings occupied well into the 19th century.
In the fall of 2007, Gibb Archaeological Consulting, volunteers, and the Archeological Society of Maryland (going under the name the Port Tobacco Archaeological Project) conducted 25 ft. interval shovel testing of the Brawner Hotel/Smoot House lots. The Brawner Hotel served as a hotel or tavern for many years prior to the war and continued in that vein until the town was largely abandoned in the 1890s. The Smoot House lot is northwest of the courthouse. The Brawner Hotel and Smoot House sites were occupied during the Civil War and their owners sympathized with the South. The properties may have been sites of underground activities in support of the Southern cause; the Brawner Hotel is reputed to have been the scene of one or more meeting during which plans to kidnap President Lincoln were formulated.
In December 2007, the team conducted close-interval (25 ft) shovel testing on the Volman (Chimney House) and Barbour (Stagg Hall) properties. The team returned to Port Tobacco on May 4, 2008 to conduct a controlled surface collection of the Edelen Fields south of the village, an area of about 30 acres. The shovel testing revealed not only deposits associated with both 18th-century dwellings, but possible structural remains related to two or more 18th-century domestic and/or commercial sites.
In June 2008, the Archeological Society of Maryland (ASM) field session worked at Port Tobacco excavating 23 5 ×5-foot test units and one 2 ×10-foot test trench at four loci within the site. The locations included the aboriginal locus (seven 5 × units), the cemetery locus (three 5 × 5 units), the jailhouse locus (six 5 × 5 units and the 2 × 10-foot trench), and the Wade House/Centennial Hotel locus (six 5 × 5 units). Excavation in the aboriginal locus revealed evidence of a Contact Period aboriginal site and an 18th-century earthfast dwelling with a cellar hole or series of overlapping borrow pits. A buried A-horizon yielded 18th-century domestic materials and late prehistoric material including Moyaone and Potomac Creek pottery. Also recorded were four graveshafts and a paling fence trench in the cemetery locus. The presence of daub and paucity of colonial domestic artifacts suggest that the original Anglican church is nearby. Six 5 × 5-foot excavation units and one 2.5 × 10 foot trench located the foundations of the 1859-1896 jail and deep deposits of demolition rubble dating to the 1940s. Test excavations at the Wade House/Centennial Hotel proved inconclusive, the two units falling within the masonry rubble filled cellar. Four units excavated 20 ft grid north of the Wade House units encountered complex stratigraphy and a mixed assemblage of 18th and 19th-century ceramics, glass and other artifacts suggestive of earthmoving, possibly in connection with the filling of the cellar hole depression after the collapse or removal of the Wade House ruin.
The ASM field session returned in 2009, excavating 25 5 × 5-foot test units in several locations. An additional four units were added to the aboriginal locus, and another two were placed about 75 feet south of the original locus, in another area of precontact artifact concentration from the 2007 shovel testing. This was called aboriginal locus 2, and appears to have intact deposits, although the nature of these is unclear. The cemetery locus was expanded and was renamed the postline locus when expansion revealed the features to be large square postholes, rather than graveshafts. Features included a number of postholes/molds, six of which were arranged in a line on approximate 4-foot centers, and a large dark midden, in addition to several fenceposts.
Work also focused on finding the James A. Swann House. An 1850 Census listed four tavern keepers in Port Tobacco: David Middleton (Union Hotel), Peregrine Davis (Indian King Hotel), Lyne Shackelford (Farmers and Planter Hotel), and James Swann, a free African American. A walkover survey revealed a rubble pile of building stone and trash that also contained brick, oyster shell, and historic ceramics. This location had not been a part of the original 2007 shovel test survey of the town. Four 5 × 5-foot units were excavated around the south end of the rubble pile in search of the foundation and yard of the Swann House. The units failed to identify foundations of the Swann House but did reveal midden deposits that dated from the 18th and 19th centuries.
In June 2009, intensive excavations were begun on the Indian King Hotel and Blacksmith Shop loci located east of the courthouse. At the Blacksmith Shop locus, 8 5 × 5-foot test units were excavated in two locations which had yielded slag, indeterminate iron, and a horseshoe during the 2008 testing, possibly indicating the location of the Coombs smithy. Testing was undertaken to explore the deposits to determine whether it had been one of at least two blacksmith shops in operation during the Civil War. Excavations yielded more slag, but dense deposits of gravel, washed in from the heights to the east, which covered this area with as much as 2.5 ft of material. Testing did not locate the footprint of a building, or date the blacksmith shop or shops.
In the Indian King Hotel locus, 10 excavation units were opened to locate the foundation of the hotel, which had been a prominent building in the landscape of Civil War-era Port Tobacco. Peregrine (Perry or Pere) Davis owned the hotel as early as 1847. He closed it in 1856 after purchasing the Farmers and Planters Hotel, offering the Indian King for lease as a private residence, and then as a hotel for rent in 1857. Davis announced his retirement the following year after Henry R. Scott assumed management of the Indian King and Zachariah V. Posey took on the Farmers and Planters Hotel. The ten test units encountered robber's trenches below the plowzone. Although abundant material was recovered, stratigraphic integrity survived only in a Colonial Period deposit, probably immediately pre-Revolutionary War. The trenches likely represent one or more colonial period buildings (possibly an ordinary) dismantled and cannibalized for brick prior to construction of the Indian King Hotel. Only one definitive Civil War-era artifact (a uniform button) and several possible Union Army artifacts were recovered. Based on the available data, the Indian King Hotel cannot be definitively placed on the Port Tobacco landscape, nor is there any evidence of its appearance.
In the fall of 2009, the area west of the four original Swann House test units was explored. Preliminary analysis of the findings the earlier Swann House fieldwork had produced ambiguous results. No foundation had been located, and the artifacts suggested the possibility of an earlier dwelling. Three additional 5 × 5-foot excavation units were placed west of the original four units, revealing an oyster shell midden, but no evidence of a foundation. Historic ceramics recovered from these units were consistent with a mid to late-19th century occupation, but also revealed an earlier 18th century occupation, a pattern consistent with the findings in Swann East. Brush-clearing south of the rubble pile revealed an alignment of stones that proved to be a stone-lined cellar hole with a brick-end chimney conforming to the configuration depicted in the Swann House photograph. The foundation was completely exposed, revealing a chimney base with two closets flanking the hearth. Excavation of one 5 × 5-foot unit in the northeast corner of the structure revealed two feet of mid-20th century domestic refuse (automobile parts and household trash) indicating that the structure stood into the 1960s and was demolished with earthmoving machinery. The site appears to have been occupied from the mid- to late 18th century until sometime in the late 19th or early 20th centuries; but the house may date to the second quarter of the 19th century and possibly have been built by James Swann or his immediate predecessors, William Graham and James Sheirburn.
References
2007 A Phase I Intensive Archaeological Survey of the Southern Half of Port Tobacco (18CH765 [and 18CH94]), Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland. (Gibb Archaeological Consulting) MHT # CH 148.
2008 Seeking Port Tobacco: An Intensive Archaeological Investigation of a Maryland Town Site, Part 2. (Gibb Archaeological Consulting) MHT # CH 149.
2008 The 2008 Field Session of the Archeological Society of Maryland: Site Examinations at Port Tobacco. (Gibb Archaeological Consulting) MHT # CH 150.
2011 Conspiracy! Port Tobacco and the Plot to Assassinate President Lincoln. (Gibb Archaeological Consulting, Inc.) MHT # CH 162.
2009a The 2009 Field Session of the Archaeological Society of Maryland: Site Examinations at Port Tobacco. (Gibb Archaeological Consulting) MHT # CH 164.
2009b "Port Tobacco: A Shifting Settlement Pattern." Maryland Archeology 45 (1 & 2):58-66.
