Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18AP14 Victualling Warehouse
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
The Victualling Warehouse Site (18AP14) is the archeological remains associated with 18th and 19th century warehouses operating in the waterfront area of Annapolis, Maryland. The site is situated at 77-Main Street, at the corner of Main and Compromise Streets, directly opposite the historic city dockyard. Most of the surrounding landscape is heavily developed, with much of the area being used (both historically and in modern times) commercial and residential uses. A standing, early 19th century vernacular brick structure with end chimneys (MIHP# AA-532) sits at the site. Soils at the site are Monmouth sandy loams.
Archival research reveals that the first recorded owner of the site area was Amos Garrett, a wealthy Annapolis merchant. In 1737, Amos Garrett’s heirs sold several lots of waterfront property (including this site) to Dr. Charles Carroll for £350. Between 1737 and 1748 the site was conveyed to Daniel Dulany, a sometime business partner of Dr. Charles Carroll. Daniel Dulany presented the land, which by this time contained two warehouses (one “commonly called the prize house adjoining to Doctor Carroll’s Lott”, the other “built by Amos Woodward deceased”), to his son Walter in 1748 by deed of gift. How he came into possession of the land is not clear as no recorded deed between Carroll and Dulaney has been found.
The deed’s description of the warehouses gives us our first clue as to the early use of the waterfront site. The “prize house” was quite probably named for the tobacco prise (or prize), a device used for packing tobacco into hogsheads prior to shipping. Amos Woodward, (nephew and one of the heirs of Amos Garrett), builder of the other warehouse, was a wealthy Annapolis merchant, whose gross worth at his death in 1735 was over £1,100.
Walter Dulaney left the property to his son Daniel, a loyalist who found it prudent to flee Maryland during the Revolution. His property was confiscated in 1781 and the waterfront warehouses used as a Victualling Office to store and distribute supplies during the war. It is this wartime activity that gives the site its name, but there is little contemporary evidence that the people of Annapolis called it the Victualling Office (or Warehouse) after about 1784.
On May 25th, 1784, an Annapolis merchant named William Wilkins advertised goods for sale at, “his store on the dock, where the victualling-office was lately kept”. About a year later, on May 17th, 1785, Wilkins purchased the property from the State of Maryland for £1400 at public auction. Then, on May 24th, 1787 he bought a small piece of land, “adjoining to the house where the said William Wilkins now keeps his store”. Later records indicate that he then lived on this lot.
On the morning of January 21st, 1790 a fire originating in Mr. Richard Fleming’s bakehouse destroyed Fleming’s “dwelling house”, with the tenement adjoining thereto, and also the dwelling houses of Mr. Henry Sybell and Mr. William Wilkins, and three warehouses”. In short, the entire block of Church Street (now Main) between Green and Compromise was burned down. Wilkins apparently did not rebuild on the lot. In 1807, he advertised for sale, “a lot of ground near the Dock, where his house was burned” in the Maryland Gazette. When the lot was finally sold in 1810 for £100, the deed made no mention of buildings.
The purchasers of the site in 1810 were George and John Barber, who by 1816 had built a new store on the wharf. This is quite probably the extant brick structure now standing at 77 Main Street, built mostly on the foundations of one of the burned-out buildings. The Barbers continued to run a store, and a packet between Annapolis and Baltimore, until John’s death in April, 1822. By October of that year Adam and John Miller had leased the property and were selling fall and winter goods. The Millers continued to keep a store there well into the 1830s, but never bought the lot. Records indicate that they made several changes on the property, including the construction of a second warehouse (likely soon after they leased the property in 1822), and several “houses”. The second warehouse would be gone by the time of the 1866-1868 Anne Arundel County Assessment.
In 1852, the Barber heirs sold the site to Nicholas Kilman, who resided on the premises and kept a store called Noah’s Ark. In 1864 the site was again afflicted by fire, which destroyed the third storey and most of the interior of the building. Kilman’s stock and possessions were removed during the fire by some helpful Union soldiers, who, according to Riley, were incensed to find 3 Confederate flags among Kilman’s belongings. After the fire, the building was repaired, minus the third floor, and Kilman remained on the site until his death in 1870.
Kilman’s estate was not settled until 1890, when an equity case divided the site into two lots. One lot, contained a frame house and designated Lot 10, was sold to Basil and Partlett & Co. who owned a lumberyard on Compromise St. This lot was incorporated into their other holdings. The other lot, Lot 9, included the brick warehouse built around 1810 and is the present-day 77 Main Street lot.
Insurance maps show that a variety of structures have stood on the 77 Main Street lot since the 19th century. Their presence on the site is confirmed by a variety of wall and roof lines still visible on a retaining wall behind the Victualling Warehouse, and also on the rear wall of the building itself. In addition, the 1930-1965 Sanborn Map “shows a structure 3.7 m (12 ft) high and with a concrete floor completely covering the yard and alleyway behind 77 Main Street. What these outbuildings were used for is not recorded in the historical record.
The first documented archeological work to be conducted at 18AP14 occurred in 1971. At the time, the Maryland Historic Trust was undertaking a program of research and restoration in Annapolis, and the Trust was supporting excavations, in an effort to understand more about the standing structures present at two sites: 18AP13 and 18AP14. The excavation was an attempt to establish a general chronology for the sequence of construction and alteration to the standing structure(s) at 18AP14. More specifically, the project attempted to retrieve and record whatever evidence might remain of the dimensions, construction, appearance, and use of any earlier structure at the site and whether all or any part of the subfloor area of the building was filled cellar from the extant building or a previous one.
The 1971 excavators removed the wood flooring on the interior of the building, and revealed a dirt surface 20-25 cm below the floor. In addition, there was a 61 cm stone wall running east-west down the center of the building. A grid was established using the center-line of this center wall as a baseline. The point at which this line intersected the west end of the building was designated as the datum. A detailed description of the field methods used is not provided in the site report available at MHT.
The excavation revealed a chronological sequence of occupation and construction, seen in 3 distinct levels. Level I consisted of several layers of rubble fill associated with the construction, occupation, an alteration of the extant building. Again, the structure was built in the early 19th century. Level II consisted of a thick burn layer deposited over the interior, except in an area along the west wall, behind the remains of a fireplace. This is associated with the original warehouse structure which was destroyed in 1790 by a fire. Level III below the burn layer consisted of clean yellow sand, almost sterile. Below this, at approximately 61 cm below the surface, there was a dense layer of yellow marl clay sealing the water table.
The 1971 excavators were unable to establish either a date of construction or details of the appearance for the original warehouse structure. It was suggested, however, that the original west wall might have been 91-122 cm (3-4 ft) farther east than the extant building’s west wall. No inventory of the artifacts recovered during the 1971 excavations is provided in the full site report.
The portions of the property behind the standing Victualling Warehouse structure were excavated over three full or partial field seasons in 1982, 1983, and 1984. The site, which covered about 119.1 square meters (1,182 square feet), was laid out in a horizontal grid of 1.524 m (5 ft) squares. This grid would be re-mapped by transit at the beginning of the 1983 season and found to be several centimeters off, however excavators did not feel the differences were significant.
A total of thirty-six 1.524 X 1.524 m units or partial units were excavated during the 3 summers of excavation. Excavation proceeded in 7.62 cm (3 in) arbitrary subdivisions of natural stratigraphic levels using shovels and trowels. Screening through hardware mesh was employed selectively, but was always used for feature excavation. Only samples of architectural materials were collected (including brick, stone, mortar, plaster, and wood).
Ten features were identified at the site during the 1982-1984 projects. Features 1-4, 6, and 8-10 were architectural in nature (see below). Feature 5 was an articulated dog skeleton. Feature 7 was a deposit of 20th century fill that intruded on the northeastern corner of Feature 4.
Feature 1 was a 3-course wide wall supported by a 28 cm (11 in) high sandstone rubble foundation. The foundation’s top was smoothed with mortar to form a flat surface for laying brick. Ground water was discovered 20.3 cm (8 in) below the foundation, which may account for the relative shallowness of the foundations in relation to the size of the structure they supported. Floor joists were visible in some areas of the feature. In two units, the joists rested on top of a stone foundation designated Feature 6. Feature 6 was thought to be the warehouse’s eastern exterior wall and not an interior dividing wall. In the southwest corner of Feature 1, the remains of five heavily charred boards were discovered in situ. These burnt boards and the other charred artifacts recovered within the area of the feature suggest that Feature 1 and Feature 6 were, in all probability, the remains of one of the 18th century warehouses destroyed by fire in 1790.
Feature 2 was a cobble paving which was laid flush with the exterior south and west walls of the 18th century building identified as Feature 1. During the summer 1984 excavations, the paving was removed in one unit, but no artifacts were found beneath which could help date the feature. However, from the paving’s relationship to the wall of Feature 1 and the presence of several pieces of fused, partially melted iron on top of the cobbles, it was without doubt in place before the 1790 fire.
Feature 3 was another pavement, this one made primarily of broken pieces and fragments of brick. It was bounded on the west by Feature 6. On the south it continued under the cinder-block wall belonging to the theater next door. On the north and east it had been disturbed by later activities on the site. Several sherds of tin-glazed English earthenware were recovered beneath the feature (dating to the 1720s), suggesting that it may date to the construction of the first warehouses on the site.
Feature 4 was a brick and mortar arch of uncertain function. It was speculated that it may have been the foundation for an outbuilding of some sort, or that it might be the base for a set of stairs to the city waterfront.
Feature 8 was a large posthole intrusive through the Feature 3 brick pavement. Within the hole was a dark brown fill containing fragments of creamware, pearlware, bone, oyster shell, glass, mortar, and brick. This posthole could strengthen the assumption that the Feature 6 foundation supported an exterior wall, as posts would be unlikely to be found within a brick structure. The post may have supported a roof over the pavement, to protect goods being unloaded, or perhaps a clothesline, or it may simply relate to much later activities at the site.
Feature 9 was a brick hearth and fireplace found at the southern end of the brick structure defined by Feature 1. Examinations suggested that the original hearth was a small affair, later replaced by a large hearth that projected into this room in the warehouse. This could correspond with the Wilkins occupation, the first documented evidence of residence at the site. A larger hearth area would make sense for a residence, where room would be needed for cooking activity.
Feature 10 was another posthole. It was filled with dark brown loam containing charcoal, brick, and mortar fragments. It ended with a 2 X 4 postmold. The exact placement of the posthole within the test unit is uncertain, so any relation it might have to the Feature 8 posthole is obscure. There is nothing to suggest a date for this feature.
The archeological investigations from 1982-1984 resulted in the excavation of more than 22,000 artifacts, the majority of which were ceramics (2,556), bottle and window glass (5682). Also collected were brick fragments, mortar, nails, oyster shell (1,732 pieces), animal bone (4,774 pieces), and lead printer’s type (124 pieces). Personal items such as buttons, buckles, coins, marbles, and tobacco pipe fragments were also represented.
Minimum vessel counts were performed on the collections from 18AP14; both the excavations of 1972 and the early 1980s. The goal was to determine if evidence of the “Georgian” mindset was reflected in the patterning of the debris left by the former site occupants. In particular, ceramic diversity was viewed as an indication of “modernity” and participation in the market economy. The results show an extremely homogenous set of vessels with low diversity and thus relatively low integration into a wage earning economy. While this may reflect the resident’s poverty, it is still a surprise given the likelihood of their connection to the market system. The tallies for diagnostic sherds provided in the table above are minimal estimates derived from the minimum vessel counts study and based on the idea that an individual vessel is represented by at least 1 sherd.
Based on these findings, Site 18AP14 is a significant archeological resource. The current potential of the site is uncertain, since very large portions of the site have already been excavated. Roughly the northern 1/3 of the yard area excavated from 1982-1984 does not appear to have been excavated. This portion of the site may be a venue for future research.
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