10. Upon This Land: Episode 10- Part 1
Transcript
Dustin Baker George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born. Only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present, and future of this place. Brick by brick. On this podcast series Upon This Land history, mystery and monuments. In January of 1930, George Washington Birthplace National Monument was created as a unit of the National Park Service. At the same time the park was created, the Wakefield National Memorial Association was working to preserve the landscape of George's childhood. Among the association's plans was to build a memorial house museum worthy of the first president. During the construction of the Memorial House Museum, archeologists excavated a colonial era brick foundation yards away. The NPS waited until the completion of the Memorial House Museum before further investigating the foundation. When the large brick foundation was finally fully exposed in 1936, it led some to speculate that this was the original location of George Washington's birth home. Especially when coupled with the numerous 18th century artifacts recovered during the excavation, the foundation was named Building X due to the uncertainty of what it truly represented. In the 1970s, another archeological project was completed, but yielded no new evidence to prove that Building X was the birth-home of George Washington. The NPS, however, began to refer to this location as the definitive ruins of the birth home. During this period, the nation was celebrating its bicentennial in 1976, and the resulting pressure to identify the location of George's birth home may have been the driving force behind this dramatic change. In the early 21st century, advancements in historic archeology led park staff and archeologists to review the efficacy of past excavations and analysis, which in turn led to a recommendation to reopen the foundations for reexamination. In partnership with New South Associates, Inc., Building X was once again opened in 2022 with the hopes of shedding more light on 86 years of uncertainty. On this episode of our podcast. We share findings from this recent study of Building X. Bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the biggest mysteries of the park. Hi, my name is Dustin Baker, and I'm the Chief of Interpretation and Education here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. Joining me today is Kerry Gonzalez, Chief of Cultural Resource Management for the park. Jonathan Malriat, lead interpretive park ranger. And Maureen Meyers, principal investigator of archeology with New South Associates. All right, everyone, thanks for joining us. We actually have two new guests on the podcast this month. And if y'all could introduce yourselves.
Kerry Gonzalez Hi. My name is Kerry Gonzalez. I'm the Chief of Cultural Resource Management at George Washington Birthplace and Thomas Stone National Historic Site.
Maureen Meyers Hi, I'm Maureen Meyers, I'm a principal investigator of archeology at New South Associates, based in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Jonathan Malriat Okay, so, Kerry, why don’t you take a second and tell us what does your job entail as the cultural resource specialist? What is that job or even what's your background in getting into that job?
Kerry Gonzalez Well, the background's easier to explain, because I feel like I do so many things here, wear so many hats. My background is in, historic archeology. I've been doing archeology professionally since 2001. So when I got my first job as a field technician in Pennsylvania, and I've been working and, I worked in the cultural resource management industry for 20 years, I just recently came to the birthplace. And just for the listeners, I'll probably refer to the park here as the birthplace or GEWA throughout the rest of this. I came here in January. I was a lab manager for a long time with a firm. So I've got a strong background in material culture, artifacts from all different time periods. Here, I'm responsible for all the archeological resources and architectural resources. So both above and below ground, helping with compliance. If, something needs to be done to one of the buildings or there's ground disturbance, I help with research, plan excavations, and just, you know, help preserve and protect and interpret the the wonderful resources that we have here.
Jonathan Malriat Yeah, that definitely is an all encompassing title there.
Kerry Gonzalez Yeah, it is.
Jonathan Malriat So, Maureen, you said I think it was primary investigator. So do you wanna tell us a bit what that entails and also what your background is?
Maureen Meyers Sure. Yeah, actually principal investigator. And, so that entails, I oversee about at least a dozen, 12 to 15 projects at a time for New South. I don't go in the field very much anymore. I do occasionally. So I do a range of projects. We have, contracts with most, I think, all DOTs in the southeast. Most of the DOTs. And then we also have contracts with different Park Service units, Forest Service, Corps of Engineers. So, for example, right now I have a crew in the field in Mississippi on a thousand acre survey, for pine beetle infestation that has to be done. And I'm also overseeing the report writing of other similar things. We have a lot of Corps, Corps of Engineers right now. But I also do things like I did a revised National Historic Landmark for a mound site in Arkansas. And, I write a lot of cultural context and do research on another site on the Natchez Trace in, Mississippi. And then I do a lot of overseeing a lot of Georgia projects and Virginia projects. So my I'm actually a native of Virginia. I grew up in the Fairfax area. I knew from an early age I wanted to do archeology, and my first archeology was as a volunteer in high school at Mount Vernon. Actually, because it was real close to my house. And they had Saturday hours and they were wonderful with volunteers. I went on to Radford, and then UGA and ultimately University of Kentucky for my degrees and, I actually did, I do a lot of my research on a mound site in southwest Virginia, and I still do research there and work with folks there. I have done a lot of cultural resource management, and for many years did it in Virginia, out of Richmond for different offices. But I've also worked in South Carolina. And my specialties are Native Americans of the late contact, pre-contact and contact period. And I actually study Native American women, in households and production of fabrics and dyes and those kind of things. So I have a wide ranging interests.
Jonathan Malriat So so you mentioned an acronym of CRM. Do you want to take a second to explain what CRM is? Just so anyone who's not familiar with that term, aka myself has an idea?
Maureen Meyers Sure. CRM stands for Cultural Resource Management. In, you know, there's there's about a 150 year history of archeology in the America, in America, in the US. But it wasn't until the 1960s, as we experienced a lot of, building boom and infrastructure boom, after World War two. So the, the, building, the construction of all the major highways, archeologists began to realize, that a lot of cultural resources, what most people would term archeology sites and important architecture, historic architecture, was being destroyed. And so the National Historic Preservation Act, passed in the late 1960s, was a way that, a lot of archeologists came together to make sure that those resources, if they were important, were not going to be destroyed and would otherwise be recorded. And so that created the National Register of Historic Places, which has different criteria for listing sites on it. And then also it created state historic preservation offices for every state, and it created a state archeological registry. And it mandated what's known as section 106. It's section one oh six of the NHPA, the National Historic Preservation Act. So it mandated that, any, any project that uses federal monies and often state monies has to, do a survey to identify archeological sites and determine if they are significant for listing on that National Register. As a result of that law passage, a lot of, CRM was sort of born. Cultural resource management in the 1970s and 80s and into today, we now have a multi-million dollar industry, really, of, private firms like mine that meet that demand. And so we answer any kind of, work proposals that are put out by any federal and usually state agency to, meet their mandates. And so that's a general sense. I think Kerry can talk more specifically to how the NPS works, and that if you all want.
Kerry Gonzalez If I could add for the listeners to that, I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, Maureen, but at least 80% of the archeological sites identified in the United States are through CRM.
Maureen Meyers Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a great point. So I should follow up with four out of five archeologists. In the United States are employed this way. It's how it is, as Kerry says, how most of archeology gets done in the United States. It's really important archeology. And we have a massive data base. Every state does of all the archeological sites that's added to all the time, it's it's really quite a I think it's a tremendous thing and, and a great use of tax dollars. So yeah.
Dustin Baker We are very lucky to have both of you on the podcast and what really is bringing us all together for this episode is a really important archeological feature here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument, known as building X. And this feature was reopened in spring of 20..2022. And it's been refilled almost exactly two years ago. But this site had actually been opened, as far back as the 1930s and studied. So after almost 100 years, what motivated the park and experts to take another look at this site?
Jonathan Malriat The other thing I will put in there on that is Maureen is the was the lead on this excavation that was doing this. So that's why we have her and Kerry, who's our cultural resource specialist on this call, answering these questions for us.
Kerry Gonzalez So, why did we look at a feature that had been excavated in the 30s and then looked at again and 1970s by Dr. Norman Barka, and it's, it's there's several reasons technologies change. And I'll let Maureen get into that a little bit more, since her firm was the one that that did that. But we wanted to take a whole encompassing look at building X. It was completely exposed and most importantly, we wanted Willie Graham, foremost expert on early buildings in the Chesapeake, to really get in there and get up close with the brick and the mortar and the joining and all of those construction methods to let that speak to him, to tell so he could develop a, construction phase narrative for us. And that was really important for us to understand how building X was constructed. And we were able, from what New South did and through Willie Graham's analysis, to determine that there were at least three construction phases. It started out as a one room building, and then it evolved and grew over time. It grew out, you know, it's a very it's a nice landscape. And when you have a lot of land, it's easier to to build out than up. And that was how building X evolved.
Maureen Meyers Right. And so our, our, the purpose of our work was to really expose and analyze and record building X. And so let me say too, that, yeah, the site was excavated in the 1930s. It's actually, to me, a really interesting example. And, are really one of the first, earliest excavations, in, in the US and certainly in Virginia. It's really part of the birth of historic archeology as a discipline. And, so as an archeologist, I kind of geek out on that a little bit. I think that's really cool, because I really like looking at the history of archeology. And but one of the things I think we need to keep in mind is that when an archeologist, you know, when and I used to teach archeology a lot. And so one of the things we always say to archeologists is you kind of get one shot, right? You can't really you can't usually re excavate a site. Once you remove the fill and the artifacts, they're taken out of the context in which we find them. And so by doing that, you know, a lot of people think archeology is all about the artifacts and the things that you find. But for archeologists, it is equally, if not more important, to understand the context in which the artifacts are found so we can identify you know, if all the kitchenware is together, that tells us, hey, this might be the kitchen, or if there's non kitchenware things or we could separate where people are cooking versus eating versus doing other things, just as our own homes are separated in that way. So when you remove that context, it gets more difficult to do that. And so normally most sites you can only dig them once. And so archeologists are very good about keeping very good records. When you go back to a site that's already been excavated, there should be a pretty good reason to do that. Because you're not going to get a whole lot of information because the context is gone. So some of the things we were looking for was to see, well did the 1930s archeologist, excuse me, remove all the contexts? I mean, did they remove all the the original, filling there, the soils, or is there anything left to see? And just like we have advanced our, you know, all disciplines advance, our discipline is more advanced in methods. We had some interesting methods that we could apply just by, removing the the fill that was there and seeing the remains and having somebody like Willie Graham come and look at the actual remains of the structure. And then just see what other what else there might be. So there were a couple of good reasons in this case, I think, to go back to the site and look at what was there.
Dustin Baker So not only was there this previous excavation, but there's also a lot of oral traditions about this site. So did any of you all come in with expectations of what you would find or, have any preconceived notions and were those challenged?
Maureen Meyers That's a good question. I think if I had a preconceived notion, I think the thing that surprised me was that, that the archeology they did in the 30s was as good as they did. That was really, you know, kind of surprising to me. I was aware of some of the different stories, and I, you know, I take those into account, but just like, as I said, you know, I, I first learned my archeology at Mount Vernon. There's lots of stories about George Washington that, as we all know, may or may not be true. Right. And so the thing I like about the archeology is that it tells you, it tells you what, or it reflects the behavior of what people actually did. So we all know that people can tell you something or that ideas and stories are passed down, or maybe in our own families, they're passed down. But then, you know, the the way to test those is you can't you can't go back and ask the ancestors, but you can look at the archeology and see what it says, because it's showing behavior. And so, I don't know that I, I think I've done this so long now that I just, I listen, you know, I think oral histories are very important, especially when we're talking about, our, you know, indigenous ancestors and I, I use those as just another line of, of evidence and I, but I do rely on, I trained as an archeologist, so I rely on the archeology to see what it's going to say. So I'm not sure that I, I necessarily went in there other than I thought, well, I'm sure, you know, whatever we find that they did in the 30s isn't going to be that great. And I was actually really surprised as we, you know, we sort of dove into the records and saw some photographs, and some records that it was actually very good.
Kerry Gonzalez When I started at the park, I was surprised, too, at how well the archeology was done. It's not necessarily, if we had building X to go excavate today, never had been excavated before, would we do it differently? Yes. But, knowing how other things were excavated early on and using that as a comparison where someone was just wildly digging, they they did do a good job.
Jonathan Malriat So what are some of the differences between how the excavation was done in the 1930s and how the excavation is done today? Like you're saying that there is differences, like if you were doing it today would be different. So what are some of those? What has changed?
Maureen Meyers Okay. Yeah. So probably the main thing, the main thing they did right was, they used, some they paid attention to the soil stratigraphy. And they also used what's known as arbitrary layers to excavate. So they excavated in each layer was I don't remember specifically, but we use arbitrary layers today, normally ten centimeters. And from there you can actually reconstruct the stratigraphy later. So they both recorded the stratigraphy and were able to reconstruct it. And that was really nice. The thing that wasn't great was they used a grid system, which is what we do. So, and that allows you to record where the artifacts actually are or where the different what we call features in the soil are. And then you can reconstruct this because that's all you're doing with archeology. You're, you know, meticulously recording everything you find so that later on when you can't look at it anymore because you've excavated it, you're going to be able to reconstruct it. And they did do that. However, their grid system was, to put it nicely. It was really convoluted. So it's, it's I'm, I'm, I'm sure don’t fully understand, I think Bill Levy actually, maybe the only person that fully understands that, and it you one of the things it did was use, I think it use the same letters or numbers again. And so it's very difficult to tell where if an artifact is actually from this part of the grid system or that part of the grid system. And if you, you know, grid systems are pretty new when they were excavating in the 1930s. So if you're new at using a grid system, that's a it's a common sort of newbie error. And I think we all learned from that. Like somebody learned from that then. And we don't do that now, but it does confuse some of the artifactual evidence, that that we got or not that we got that they got and it made it hard to reconstruct what was found where. So those two, those are the two of the main things. But then also having someone like Willie Graham. Right. The whole field of architectural history developed since, I think around that, I think it probably was starting to develop. And so it's much more developed. We've got many more excavations of historic 17th and 18th century architecture, especially in colonial Virginia, because Colonial Williamsburg was was created right from because J.C. Harrington did a lot of the excavations there. And so you've got someone like Willie Graham, who is using all of that information to then go back to this site and interpret it. So that's, that's pretty big. And then we did, a few other things. We were able to do a 3D laser scan, of the, of the remains. They certainly couldn't have done that in the 1930s. And then we also used, something called portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) to try to identify the mortar and the brick. What, what recipes were used to make both the mortar and the brick? We had more limited, success with that. But again, it was something that they wouldn't have used in the 1930s.
Kerry Gonzalez And with the, the PXRF, they also were able to, determine the wash on the brick. Isn't that right?
Maureen Meyers Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they found higher levels of some elements in, in both the mortar and the brick. Which could indicate a few different things. So I did sort of, pull on my Mount Vernon knowledge a little bit. And my, you know, being an archeologist in Virginia, you, you tend to learn a lot about the 17th and 18th century. And I realized at some point that. Oh, right. They would they would do a lime wash on this brick or possibly painted the brick. And those would explain the higher amounts of those particular elements that were found in the PXRF. And one thing and Kerry and I were talking about this, a bit, on, on one of our conversations, that PXRF sort of opens the door for us to start to wonder or really be able to investigate, are they making the bricks and the mortar right there on site, or are they is it being made elsewhere and shipped in which I wouldn't expect, other than that would be an expense. And maybe maybe that's a way to brag to your neighbors or to show your increasing wealth that you actually had bricks made in an actual, you know, known brick factory and shipped in. But it would be very expensive to do that. So I would expect it's being made locally, and we'd need a little bit more work in order to follow that, that line of questioning, you know, a bit more.
Kerry Gonzalez It's a very nice segue because it is, a research avenue that we are exploring here at the park to see if we can narrow that down a little more because it would be interesting to know.
Maureen Meyers Yeah. It also allows you to compare those, those bricks or in general, the entire site to other similar sites in the region. There are a couple of good examples in the region. And you could examine those and just see, okay, well how does the, you know, the Washington family compare to other similar, planters, of that class? And how does that change over time and how far, you know, are there sites, say, in Louisa County that are similar or sites, closer to Williamsburg? I mean, I think it starts to show you a bigger picture of the founding of Virginia and how how wealth, increased and changed over time and how different families control that wealth.
Jonathan Malriat So another question I have about the excavation is, so your team was the one tasked with doing the excavation. So when you're coming in to the site, how does that start? Like, are you coming in with a backhoe and just immediately digging right in or right, how does that whole process happen?
Maureen Meyers Yeah, I will say so and I will. I should say that, another PI at our firm, Kevin Bradley, oversaw the excavation. He sadly couldn't be here, he was sad he had to miss it. So, but I will say also that this was a fun one because not only is it called building X, but in a sense X marked the spot. So because, because this had been, identified and excavated in the 1930s and then filled in, the park had outlined the, the building itself in white gravel and I believe Kerry, y'all did that again right after we were finished.
Kerry Gonzalez Yeah. And so now it represents the archeological remains. What y'all exposed and it's, anyone who hasn't been out to come see it. You really should. It's it's pretty beautiful.
Maureen Meyers Right, so because of that, it that made it easier to know. Okay. Well, I, you know, here's where we dig. And so we we started by, you know, removing, removing those, the original outline of the building that was visible at the ground service. And then you remove the, the grass, and you usually, you know, sometimes some places, like Mount Vernon, we would preserve the grass. And so there's a special way to re, to remove it, keep it alive so it can be put back on as, you know, sod pieces. And then at that point, what we did was use, shovels to, to sort of, to take off the topsoil. And we did it very carefully in layers. The soil is always laid down in layers. And so as archeologists, when you remove it, you remove it slowly in layers. And we did that till we found the top of, the, the brick remains. And then also did use a grader with a really smooth bucket, a small grader and a trained operator, who came in and carefully, you know, removed a lot of the fill. And then, he did that, in some places he was able to do that, in other places we did it by shovel into wheelbarrows. And then the, the backhoe person could, could move that farther off site. You don't want your backfill too close to where you're excavating, because it can become a really dangerous situation with unstable walls and things. So you've got to keep in mind safety issues, keep in mind, you know, the remains and that you need to carefully, remove the fill. And then at that point you move from shovels to trowels and really, identify and expose all of the brick remains. And so they're fully exposed and, and, and this is where, you know, most people think of archeologists as using brushes. You might get out of brush at this point to kind of clean the bricks and that kind of thing. And just fully exposed that and we used a lot we took a lot of photographs, and we took notes at every stage of what we were doing.
Kerry Gonzalez If I could jump in for a minute because, yeah, some of the listeners might be like they used a backhoe that, why would they use that? But, but backhoes are used a lot in archeology, especially in CRM for, in this case the backhoe was used because building X was filled with fill that was not, it didn't have any significant artifacts in it, but we use them on other sites too. It's actually called the “Virginia Marshalltown” here in Virginia. Marshalltown is a brand of trowel that most archeologists use. It's, so backhoes are, you know, it's just another tool in our toolbox to expedite excavation, to get down to the your intact features. The stuff where you're going to get that solid data that's going to help you date in and understand the site.
Maureen Meyers Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When you know that the fill is just fill, that it's already been disturbed and that we knew that in this case. Right, it had been taken out in the 30s. And then when they refilled it, they just kind of threw it back in there. There's no context for the artifacts at all. In fact, there weren't very many artifacts. And in some of the, you know, in the upper layers of that fill, I yeah, it is very common, in general. And when so when I excavated, a site, in southwest Virginia, I knew like the top soot was all fill, it was all plow zoned fill. And I used a backhoe to take that off. It's a quick way to do it. It's always monitored. I mean, every scoop by the backhoe operator is monitored by a trained archeologist wearing a hard hat, let me emphasize. And then once you find any kind of intact cultural features, the backhoe stops and you switch to the archeologists using hand tools, shovels and trowels.
Jonathan Malriat So during the excavation, were there any thing you extracted or uncovered or any part of the excavation that you were really excited about, whether it be an artifact itself or even something else during the excavation that was interesting or surprising.
Maureen Meyers I mean, first it's just it was it was just cool to, to uncover the whole outline and to see it. I mean, for me, that's always just a pretty cool moment, right? I mean, and you get more remains than you normally do at a lot of other sites. I do there was, there were a couple of, one artifact that stuck out to me was a piece of brick that had, I think it had a signature on it or some kind of lettering on it. And we never were able to figure out what that was. But it was a nice intact piece. And again, if we could do more brick studies, we might be able to figure out, you know, more information about who's making the brick. So that wasn't uncommon. Some of the brick pieces, might, you know, they they can just have these, markings from where you're taking the hot brick, right? Or you're taking the not fully formed brick, and it gets a mark of a fingerprint or something like that on there. And then other times we find brick that does have people's, you know, markings or signatures or something on it. So that was kind of interesting to see. And again, you know, I, I get really interested in, okay, who are the people that make the wealth possible or who are the other people around? And so to find indicators of those people, who's working at this family farm whose names aren't recorded in history and, and how might they try to be remembered in some way. And so that's a that could be an interesting clue to that.
Kerry Gonzalez But we we can't forget about all the cats and the dogs that walk across that wet brick. I mean, we we always find those. And I will say that I had, the brick that you mentioned, Maureen, but the, the letters on it, we had that 3D scanned and through doing that we and maybe you knew this, but it's an I L L and that's what we have left on it, and I, I like to joke with one of our interp rangers here, his name is Bill. It's like, oh, Bill. That's what they were writing.
Maureen Meyers Right? That's right. Yeah. Right. Right.
Dustin Baker So you, mentioned Kevin Bradley earlier. I just want to give him a shout out. He was, if you're listening, Kevin, you were great to work with, and you really helped us and the visitors understand what was going on each day, so we really appreciate that.
Kerry Gonzalez Can can I give an additional shout out to Kevin and, I apologize I can't remember the other staff member with New South’s name, but they came out with their total station a couple months ago, when it was probably at its hottest and spent an entire day out here, mapping the outline of building X so we could put the outline back in. And I think they were here till almost 6:00 getting that done for us. And that was a it was a huge effort and really appreciated.
Jonathan Malriat Thank you for joining us on this episode of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments. Our conversations with Maureen and Kerry are not over. They'll be joining us on our next episode as we explore the results of the excavation and what that tells us about building X. And they'll also talk about how we're preserving it into the future. Join us on our next episode.
In the early 21st century, advancements in historic archeology led park staff and archeologists to review the efficacy of past excavations of Building X, which in turn led to a recommendation to reopen the foundations. In partnership with New South Associates, Inc., Building X was once again opened in 2022 with the hopes of shedding more light on 86 years of uncertainty. We share findings from this recent study of Building X, bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the biggest mysteries of the park