Site History

Charles’ Gift plantation was established by Nicholas Sewall when he came of age c. 1676. Nicholas Sewall was the eldest son of Henry and Jane Sewall, and after his father’s death and mother’s remarriage, he became the stepson of Charles Calvert in 1666. Nicholas Sewall grew up at the Mattapany-Sewall site which he would have inherited had his father lived. Since Charles Calvert married into the property and established his home there, however, Calvert gifted another parcel of land to Jane Sewall to make up for her children’s lost inheritance. When Nicholas came of age, he presumably settled the tract, which became known as Charles’ Gift plantation.

Nicholas Sewall, his wife Susanna, and their children lived at the site through the tumultuous period of the 1689 Protestant rebellion and the overthrow of the Calvert Proprietary, and passed the land to several generations of descendants. Though different dwellings and structures were erected over the years, Sewall descendants occupied the property until 1836. The site then passed to a series of different owners, but continued as a farmstead until it was purchased by the Navy in 1943.

Archaeology

18ST704 was indentified when proposed changes to the Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s Officer’s Club prompted an archaeological survey. Phase III excavations were performed to recover data from intact features that were slated to be impacted by the Officer’s Club project. The excavations revealed that the intact subsurface features were so extensive as to warrant abandonment of the construction project in favor of conservation of the archaeological site.

The major cluster of features representing the Charles’ Gift site comprise a row of postholes that probably represent Nicholas Sewall’s c. 1676 dwelling, a brick foundation from Sewall’s replacement dwelling constructed c. 1694 and occupied into the 19th century, and a large borrow pit excavated for the extraction of clay for the brick foundation of the c. 1694 house. The borrow pit, Feature 12, was filled with construction debris from the c. 1694 structure and demolition debris from the c. 1676 structure. It therefore represents a pre-1700 component of the first Sewall occupation of the site.

References

The Charles Gift archaeological collection is owned by the Naval District Washington, Naval Air Station Patuxent River and curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.