W-T, SM-018 (18ST1-18)
Site History
Site 18ST1-18, located in St. Mary's City, Maryland, is a multicomponent site including possible Late Woodland production areas, part of a 17th-century streetscape and town lot, and 18th-century features related to the William Hicks-John Mackall Plantation. Prior to sustained European contact, this site was part of a Yacocomico town and had likely been occupied by Indigenous people periodically for thousands of years. In 1641, Governor Leonard Calvert patented a 100-acre tract called Governor’s Field, which included what is today known as site ST1-18. When St. Mary's City was formally laid out in the 1670s, part of Middle Street ran along the site’s western boundary. Most of the site likely fell within the one-acre lot known as Jamaica, patented in 1678. No buildings are recorded on this lot during the 17th century, and it had reverted to being part of Governor’s Field by 1710. It was likely under cultivation until circa 1754, when William Hicks constructed a plantation house and outbuildings in the vicinity. John Mackall bought the property in 1774 and presumably lived in Hicks’s house for a time, even though it was in poor repair by 1798. The Hicks/Mackall plantation buildings had vanished from the landscape by the 1840s, when James Mackall Brome acquired the property and constructed a new plantation house south of the site.
Archaeological Investigations
In the 1930s, Henry Chandlee Forman partially excavated an 18th-century brick-lined cellar extending under Old State House Road (MD-584) within this site. This cellar probably belongs to an outbuilding from the 18th-century Hicks-Mackall plantation and was relocated in 2002. In the 1990s, possible 17th- and 18th-century features were recorded during the construction of Farthing's Parking Lot. Most of the parking lot was constructed on a layer of artificial fill to preserve archaeological contexts underneath.
Beginning in 2010, Historic St. Mary's City archaeologists undertook archaeological mitigation that involved exposing subsoil over most of the portion of the site east of Old State House Road (MD-584). It revealed a second brick outbuilding foundation probably belonging to the 18th-century Hicks-Mackall plantation. It also contained many 17th- and 18th-century fence lines, a drainage ditch that likely ran on the east side of 17th-century Middle Street, and shallow pit features containing dense concentrations of Indigenous Late Woodland pottery. Archaeological monitoring of improvements to Farthing’s Parking Lot during this mitigation did not identify any additional features in that area.
A full analysis of the mitigation results is ongoing. The significant archaeological contexts in site 18ST1-18 are closely related to similar contexts in adjacent sites 18ST1-110 and 18ST1-136A. The site is currently split between an academic building, Visitor Center complex, and Farthing's Parking Lot.
All artifacts and field records from Historic St. Mary's City Commission investigations are curated at the Historic St. Mary's City Archaeological Laboratory. Field records from earlier investigations are curated in the Henry Chandlee Forman collection at the H. Furlong Baldwin Library in Baltimore, MD.
References
1938 Jamestown and St. Mary's: Buried Cities of Romance. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
2006 Archaeological Survey and Testing for the 17th-Century "Mattapany Path" Road System, St. Mary's City, Maryland (18ST1). Report prepared by Historic St. Mary's City Department of Research, St. Mary's City, Maryland.
