Maynard Burgess House (18AP64)

The still-standing Maynard Burgess house is located at 163 Duke of Gloucester Street in the Annapolis Historic District. The Maynard-Burgess House was continuously occupied by two African-­American families, the Maynards and the Burgesses, from the 1850s until the late 1980s. The main block of the house was built between 1850 and 1858 by the household of John T. Maynard, a free African American born in 1810, and his wife Maria Spencer Maynard. John Maynard was born free in 1810. In the years prior to his acquisition of the 163 Duke of Gloucester Street property, Maynard purchased the freedom of his wife, mother-in-law, and his wife's daughter. Maynard family members lived on the property until the early-twentieth century, until it was foreclosed in 1908 and subsequently sold to the family of Willis and Mary Burgess in 1915. Willis had been a boarder in the home in 1880, and his sister Martha Ready had married John and Maria's son John Henry. Burgess descendants lived at the home until its sale in 1990.

The Maynard-Burgess House was excavated by Archaeology in Annapolis from the fall of 1990 to the summer of 1992. Archaeological testing and excavation of the site was developed alongside architectural analyses and archival research as a component of the structure’s restoration. Features that were deemed 20th-century repairs to the property, modern utility trenches and former archaeological shovels tests were not recorded for Maryland Unearthed.

The excavations of the house and yard identified a post-1889 cellar filled with household refuse (Feature 71), a post-1905 barrel privy also filled with household discards (Feature 53), circa 1850-187 4 construction episodes beneath a mid-1870s rear addition, and an apparently unfinished mid-nineteenth-century stone and brick foundation (Feature 34). These and other deposits contained a rich artifact assemblage including faunal remains, glass vessels, ceramics, and buttons. A mid-20th century witch bottle, containing red knitted fabric with numerous straight pins (contained within Feature 41), was found buried against one of the addition’s exterior walls.

The majority of the assemblage dates to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with some mid-nineteenth-century deposits. A minimum number of 91 glass and 41 ceramic vessels was recovered from the post-1889 cellar along with a concentration of tin cans and faunal remains. The post-1905 barrel privy contained a 1026 bone faunal assemblage and 25 bottles. Dense artifact concentrations were recovered from beneath an 1874 to 1877 rear addition, including a large quantity of faunal remains in a pocket of fill designated as Feature 144.

Some postholes associated with the construction of a fire hose tower for the fire station on the next lot were also recorded and excavated. Grading on the property after 1895 caused some disturbance to yard midden layers and to archaeological evidence of a late 19th century addition to the rear of the house.

Interpretation concentrated upon the diverse ways in which material consumption could both incorporate African Americans into Victorian America and provide distance from the Jim Crow racism which shaped African-American labor, market participation, and civil liberties. Analyses of species abundance and food cuts in the faunal assemblage were used to examine changes in African-American food consumption during the late-nineteenth century and the impact of mass-marketed foods upon African-American foodways. Glass vessels were examined for the type of product they contained, the geographical location of the producer, the quantity of vessels, and the time which elapsed between the production and discard of the vessels. These analyses were used to interpret the households' attachment to nationally advertised products, the types of bottled goods consumed by the households, and the rate at which bottled goods were being purchased and used. Ceramic minimum vessel counts were used to evaluate the households' obseNation of Victorian dining etiquette and determine how and where ceramic vessels were being acquired. Ceramic shard analyses were used to examine formation processes in the house's back yard and establish basic chronologies for deposits. This assemblage provides a sufficient quantity and diversity of material remains to rigorously document and critically interpret one African-American household's negotiation of Victorian America, Jim Crow racism, and the emergence of mass consumer culture.

(Edited slightly from Mullins and Warner 1993)