James Drane House (18GA303)

The James Drane House is a standing historic timber frame structure built around 1800 on the outskirts of Accident, Maryland in Garrett County.

In 1778, Colonel William Lamar entered into a contract to obtain the tract of land upon which the Drane House now sits, a sale which did not finally take place until 1817. Lamar, however, took over the maintenance of the land, paying taxes on it and settling his brother-in-law, James Drane on it in 1798. James Drane was born in 1735 in Prince George's County. In 1779, he married Priscilla Lamar and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the county militia By 1801, they were in residence in the small timber-framed Drane House, where they commenced tobacco farming. They successfully raised tobacco for several years. In addition, deposits at the site also contain information relating the the Richter family. The Richters were a German immigrant family who settled in the area and lived there throughout much of the nineteenth century.

In 1991, the Town of Accident, Maryland received a grant from the Maryland Historical Trust to conduct Phase I and II archaeological investigations as part of the stabilization and preservation of the Drane House. Phase I survey was designed to locate activity areas and outbuildings through 119 shovel test-pits and chemical testing of soil samples. Phase II testing involved excavation of twenty 1.5 X 1.5 m test units.

The location of identified activity areas was defined further when artifact distributions were compared to the results of chemical analysis. Concentrations of ceramics corresponded with areas containing relatively high concentrations of calcium, potassium, and sulfur. These chemical concentrations are associated with kitchen dumping and waste disposal. Numerous features were identified, including four activity areas. Activity area 1 dated from the earliest occupation of the site. Activity area 2 also dated from the Drane family occupation of the site, although at a slightly later time. Both were associated with kitchen-related activities. Activity area 3 was a thin sheet scatter resulting from later activities, possibly during the occupation of the parcel by the Richter family beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Activity Area 4 was a dense concentration of later ceramics north of the standing building. This assemblage also was overwhelmingly kitchen related; it dated later than any of the others. Although no features were found, the nature of this assemblage may associate it with the location of a bake oven.

One outbuilding, a deep kitchen midden associated with a possible siltstone foundation, was located (Feature 1). This feature contained roughly 97% of the site’s bone assemblage. In general, bones that could be aged were under four years of age. The bones showed little evidence of food preparation techniques; few had been burned or showed signs of having been cooked. Chicken bones were the most common bird bones recovered. Wild birds included turkey, pigeon and duck. Cow, pig, sheep/goat, black bear, white-tailed deer, raccoon, woodchuck, squirrel, and several other species were represented. Pig bones constituted the largest number of the domestic animal bones, and the white-tailed deer outnumbered other wild species.

Further Phase II testing and data recovery (Phase III) of the chimney took place. This involved re-exposure of the original 1.5 X 1.5 m test unit and excavation of a second 1.5 X 1.5 in the area of the chimney collapse.

The collections from the 1991 and 1993 projects are extensive and provide much detail on life at the Drane House and on the frontier of Western Maryland. The deposits encountered at the Drane House attest to the attempt by the Drane’s to transplant their Tidewater tobacco farming culture to western Maryland. In addition, it attests to the habitation of the property by the Richters and life for German immigrants in nineteenth-century Maryland.

(Edited from the Maryland Historical Trust Synthesis Project)