St. Inigoes Manor House (18ST330)

The St. Inigoes Manor House Site (18ST330) comprises Late Archaic to Late Woodland short-term or intermittent camps, and an early- to mid-18th century Jesuit house and chapel. It is located in the western portion of the Webster Field Annex Patuxent River Naval Station, at the Naval Electronics Systems Engineering Activity (NESEA). The northern portion of the site is bisected by Villa Road, and it is bordered by base facilities and a runway to the east, west, and south.

The Navy facility is located on the large land tract historically known as St. Inigoes Manor, although occupation at the site dates to the prehistoric period. The 2000-acre Manor had served as a plantation and as a mission operated by the Society of Jesus of the Catholic Church (Jesuits) for more than 300 years. The area known as the Old Chapel Field appears to have served as the main activity area of the Manor from as early as ca. 1638 until the mid-18th century. At least 10 archeological sites, dating from as early as the prehistoric period, have been identified in the Old Chapel Field.

St. Inigoes Manor was patented in 1634 to Richard Gerard, who sold his property in 1637 to Father Thomas Copley of the Society of Jesus. By 1638, the manor had a main residence known as St. Inigoes House, a storehouse, a tobacco barn, and other structures. Throughout the rest of the 17th century, the manor consisted of a semi-autonomous plantation with gardens, orchards, stables, barns, a store, a grist mill, and blacksmith shop, with hundreds of acres of cultivated land producing tobacco and grain. It is believed that the brick Catholic Church located in St. Mary’s City was dismantled in 1705 and the brick was reused to build a new Priest’s house at St. Inigoes. Another, possibly third, St. Inigoes Manor house appears to have been built at Priest’s Point ca. 1755. Archaeological and historical evidence support that the Old Chapel Field Manor house was dismantled and moved to Priest’s Point in the middle of the 18th century.

Beginning in 1806, new structures were built on the manor property including a brick barn, a weaver’s house, a windmill, a miller’s house, cow and hen houses, workshops, and slave quarters. A destructive raid was carried by the British in 1814; the dwellings were looted, foodstuffs confiscated and the chapel was desecrated but the Priest’s House and all the other structures were spared from being burned, allowing the mission to recover and continue to prosper. In 1872, a fire gutted the brick Priest’s House. The east wing was rebuilt into a smaller dwelling. In 1876, a 4-story “Villa House” was built nearby to house mission students. In 1919, the priest’s residence was transferred from St. Inigoes to St. Michael’s. Operations continued on a smaller scale with tenants continuing to occupy various farms located on the property. In 1942 when the US Navy acquired the north 773 acres of manor land, the Villa house and all the Jesuit buildings were removed.

1981: A 5x15' test trench was excavated (north of Villa Road), entailing removal of approximately 10" of dark brown loam (plowzone) down to intact cultural remains., subsoil, and an apparent extant utility line trench. A brick floor was revealed, approx. 8' wide and extending all the way across the 5' trench. Both exposed edges were disturbed, the one to the south by the construction of the apparent utility line. This appears to be the floor of an outbuilding.

2013: The stratigraphy is fairly consistent across the site. A brown to dark brown silt loam plowzone approximately 30-45 centimeters (1.0–1.5-foot) thick was identified over yellowish brown silty clay loam subsoil. In some locations, the subsoil appeared to be a light olive brown silty clay loam, indicative of poor drainage.

Site 18ST330 has been the subject of a series of archaeological investigations (Smolek 1981; Pogue and Leeper 1984; Galke and Loney 2000, and Katz and Shellenhamer 2013). Through these investigations the boundary of Site 18ST330 has been somewhat muddled. The initial investigation of the site (Smolek 1981) delineated the resource on the south side of Villa Road. A subsequent study (Pogue and Leeper 1984) found similar materials on the north and south sides of Villa Road, and expanded the site boundary to the north. Additional survey efforts in the Old Chapel Field (Galke and Loney 2000) found substantial sites north (18ST233) and northwest (18ST329) of Villa Road; the boundary Galke and Loney established for Site 18ST329 overlaps the expanded boundary (c.f. Pogue and Leeper 1984) of Site 18ST330. Both sites (18ST329 and 18ST330) appear to be part of the same occupation and building complex separated by a modern roadway. The 2013 investigation (Katz and Shellenhamer 2013) focused on the deposits south of Villa Road and refined the boundaries of the site in that area.

In the 1930s, priests and local scholars carried out excavations in the Old Chapel Field over a period of 5 or 6 years, uncovering two small brick foundations near present-day Villa road and a larger 25x40 ft. foundation in a nearby field on the south side of the road. Information from a local resident suggested that the 12x16 ft. two-brick wide foundation represented a chapel attached to the priests' house. By doing this, the chapel was made a residential chapel, and legal under the 1704 act prohibiting solitary Catholic churches or chapels. Features found on the north side of Villa Road, including a brick floor, may be outbuildings associated with the house to the south.

A Phase I/II archaeological investigation conducted at the site in 1981 resulted in the discovery of a large colonial period (early- to mid-18th century) habitation site, designated as 18ST330, on the south side of Villa Road. Site 18ST330 was surface collected in 1981. In most cases, only the diagnostic artifacts were retained, although all artifacts were inventoried. Items noted in the field but no always retained included firecracked rock, flakes, cores, oyster shell, nails, and bricks. Approximately 10 shovel test pits were excavated at 2 m intervals where a large amount of brick and shell were visible on the surface. A 1 m² test in this area was apparently placed in a feature: the entire bottom of the unit was comprised of ash and charcoal and had numerous oyster shell and brick fragment inclusions. The feature was not excavated. No final report was produced for the 1981 work, but a synopsis was written in 1996.

The site was again investigated in 1983 as part of utility work. A 5x15' test trench was excavated (north of Villa Road), removing plowzone down to subsoil and intact cultural remains (brick floor was revealed, approx. 8' wide and extending all the way across the 5' trench). This appears to be the floor of an outbuilding such as a dairy or a smokehouse. Also in 1983, a rubble-filled pit feature filled with large quantities of architectural and domestic debris was encountered. It was suggested that this could have been a filled structural feature such as a cellar. This structure was tentatively identified as the ca. 1705 Priest’s House and thought to be the site of the more substantial foundation discovered in the 1930s.

In 2013, Berger’s Phase I placed a total of 276 shovel tests at 10 ft. intervals within Site 18ST330. Subsequent to the shovel testing, seven 3 x 3 or 5 x 5 ft. test units were excavated. South of Villa Road, Site 18ST330 was found to have evidence of a domestic occupation from approximately 1705 until 1755. A cellar hole was identified in close proximity to Villa Road, and this feature was likely associated with the priest’s house. Also identified was a substantial kitchen midden, located in fairly close proximity to the cellar hole. The site has a rich artifact assemblage in both the plowzone and in feature contexts.

The site was also found to have a modest prehistoric assemblage indicative of a short-term camp site with periodic occupation during the Middle and Late Woodland Periods.

(Edited from state site form and the Maryland Historical Trust Synthesis Project by Patricia Samford)