Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18AP39 Newman Street
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
The Newman Street Site (18AP39) is the location of a former commercial wharf and tannery in the downtown area of the City of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County. The site is situated within a public park and playground at the corner of Newman Street and Compromise. The surrounding landscape is heavily developed as an urban area. Soils at the site are Collington and Wist sandy loams as well as some human transported soils.
In 1718, the Newman Street site was part of Lot 31 owned by Amos Garrett, a successful merchant and mayor who was one of the wealthiest men in Annapolis during the first quarter of the 18th century. By 1738, it was owned by Dr. Charles Carroll. The Carroll family would come to own most of the property between Duke of Gloucester Street and the city docks by the middle of the century. When Carroll died in 1755, the property passed to his son, Charles Carroll the Barrister. In 1767, Charles Carroll esquire (the Barrister) leased part of Lot 31 to William Logan, reserving rights to a spring of water on the property for the exclusive use of the Carroll’s cattle. This lease refers to Logan as already occupying the land and having already begun construction of a wharf. Logan agreed to surrender the wharf he was building to Carroll at the expiration of the lease.
Logan built a wharf and a stone warehouse on the property. They were placed for sale in 1779. At the time, Logan was leasing the wharf to the Maryland Navy “for the conveniency of the Gallies and other vessels, and the hands and stores belonging to them…”. According to a petition Logan made to the Maryland Legislature, the Navy all but destroyed the property. He states that windows were broken, ballast and rubble were thrown into the water along the wharf, and stonework was destroyed. Logan requested that the state return the property to the condition it was in when it was leased. There is no evidence that Logan’s petition was successful and subsequent evidence suggests that he was not.
Logan appears to have never recovered from the financial losses associated with the warehouse and wharf. In 1788, after selling off a small piece of the property, Logan petitioned the Chancellor of Maryland for relief as an insolvent debtor. Charles Carroll reclaimed the property. The property apparently lay unused for three years until 1791 when Carroll sold it to John Adam Boyer. Boyer was a tanner who ran a tannery on the site for 7 years. In 1798 he sold it to John Hyde, the son of his former employer, Thomas Hyde. Hyde continued using the property as a tannery. The wharf Logan built was still extant in 1798 and is mentioned in deed title.
In 1819 the property was willed by John Hyde to his wife Sarah, to pass to his son Daniel on her death. John Hyde expressed in his will the wish that Daniel Hyde continue in the tannery business in partnership with Sarah. Daniel must have followed his father’s wishes, as an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette of October 29, 1819 states that he has begun business at his father’s place. The wharf at 18AP39 is believed to have been filled in by 1837, based on a description of Compormise Street from that year.
Although Daniel T. Hyde or his heirs owned the property until 1878, Hyde gave up the tanning business on this property sometime between 1819 and 1878. There were three buildings on the property in 1878. The westernmost building, which would have been in the vicinity of the Newman Street playground, may be the same as one labeled “shed” on an 1891 Sanborn map which is represented as a stable on 1897 and 1903 editions of the map. In 1913 this building disappears from the Sanborn maps, and in 1921 is replaced by a large brick or masonry structure. During the first half of the 20th century the property was the site of tenements, stables, and auto-related business. In 1944 the property was acquired by the city and all existing buildings were leveled. Since then the property has been used in one way or another for a recreation area and playground.
The only documented archeological investigation to take place at the site was carried out in the summer of 1984. Exploratory excavations were conducted in the playground area of the park. The work was carried out to contribute to the public archeology program being advanced by the Archaeology in Annapolis consortium. The consortium aims to recover evidence of all parts of the social and economic structure of Annapolis through its history and archeology.
Eight 1.524 X 1.524 m (5 X 5 ft) test units were excavated to various depths during the 1984 season in the northern half of the playground area within the park. Test units were placed in areas that (according to the old Sanborn maps) were undisturbed and in the area of the former stable(s). Excavation proceeded in natural stratigraphic levels and was carried out using conventional shovels and trowels and finer implements when necessary. Initially, each layer was screened through hardware mesh. Later, as it became clear that many of the layers dated from the last five decades of the 20th century, more cursory examinations of some layers was allowed. Samples of artifacts were kept from all layers. At the completion of excavations, two adjacent profiles were drawn from each excavation unit. Profiles of holes created by removal of the playground equipment at the site were also drawn. Profiles and features were also photographed in black and white and in color transparencies. Excavations were carried out by University of Maryland students, paid field assistants, and volunteers. Not all excavation units could be dug to sterile subsoil due to the presence of high water tables. Units were excavated to depths of anywhere between 19.2 cm (.64 ft) and 1.5 m (4.5 ft) below the surface. Ultimately, nearly nineteen and three quarters m3 (696 m2) of soil were removed during the 1984 excavations.
For the most part, the 1984 excavations revealed the presence of deep layers of 19th and 20th century fill. There is some indication that some cutting into the hillside may have occurred in the 20th century in association with the construction of a concrete garage, but this cutting was into late 19th and early 20th century fill. The presence of deep fill layers over an earlier stream channel suggests that eighteenth century layers may be preserved below the level at which the water table impeded excavation. The stream was believed to have been filled sometime after 1837 based on documentary evidence that the stream was still extant at that time.
Fourteen potential features were identified during the 1984 excavations. However, all of these either were disturbed to an extent that interpretation became impossible, were debris piles used for fill or drainage in the 20th century, or were otherwise 20th century in origin.
A final artifact assemblage is not provided in the full site report, artifacts from selected layers are described, however. The described objects include 7 undecorated pearlware sherds, 12 undecorated creamware sherds, 1 slip-decorated creamware sherd, 8 undecorated whiteware sherds, 2 transfer-printed whiteware sherds, 2 lead-glazed whiteware sherds, 1 undecorated ironstone sherd, 4 lead-glazed redware sherds, 4 other redware sherds, 1 Rockingham sherd, 1 coarse earthenware sherd, 2 sherds of gray-paste stoneware, 1 coarse brown stoneware sherd, and 1 bottle (probably medicinal).
The excavations revealed a history of filling from at least 1837 to the present. This suggests that 18th century layers may be present and relatively undisturbed below the lowest 19th century layers excavated. However, no 18th century layers were actually found at the site during the 1984 season. If such layers do exist they lay beneath between 61 cm and 1.83 m (2-6 ft) of 19th and 20th century fill and are inundated with water. From the standpoint of preservation, this is good. From the standpoint of actually conducting excavations capable of addressing significant research problems, it makes things more difficult.At the time of this work, it was difficult to say with any certainty whether additional excavation at the site is justifiable. Site 18AP39 is perhaps best characterized as “potentially” significant.
The City of Annapolis contracted with AECOM to develop final engineering design plans and provide permitting support for the mitigation of flooding at City Dock through construction of a new pump station, realignment of existing storm drain systems, and grading along the existing bulkhead. The proposed undertaking would require ground-disturbing activities that could potentially impact subsurface archaeological resources. In 2018, AECOM conducted a Phase IA archaeological assessment for the project’s proposed Limits of Disturbance (LOD) to document historic land modifications to the proposed LOD, assess the potential of the proposed LOD to contain significant archaeological resources, and identify areas for additional archaeological investigations. Based on the results of the Phase IA study and consultation with the Maryland Historical Trust (MHT), AECOM conducted a geophysical survey of the proposed location of the control building and wet well and a review of geotechnical soil borings to better characterize the potential for this area to contain significant archaeological resources. The results of the geophysical survey indicated high potential for archaeological features to be present in locations that will be directly impacted by the proposed undertaking. In 2019, AECOM conducted a Phase II archaeological investigation within the proposed location of the control building and wet-well (henceforth Phase II Study Area) to determine if deposits associated with previously recorded 18AP39 were present within the LOD. The goals of the study were to evaluate the site’s eligibility for listing in the NRHP and to identify significant archaeological deposits associated with site 18AP39 within the LOD, if present.
As a result of the investigation, AECOM recovered 3,297 artifacts and identified intact archaeological features and occupational deposits ranging from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. All artifacts are historic. The clothing (n=16), foodways (n=1,266), household/structural (n=1,411), labor (n=236), personal (n=47), and miscellaneous (n=321) groups are represented. Diagnostic artifacts dated from the early eighteenth to mid twentieth centuries were identified, in many instances, from secured contexts. Specifically, the excavation of six 1-x-1 m TUs resulted in the identification of a late eighteenth century foundation, a plank floor and post hole possibly constructed as early as the 1830s, but no later than the late nineteenth century, and a brick foundation related to a building constructed no later than 1878. The nineteenth century features can be linked to at least two artisan/merchant class families living and working at these locations between 1840 and the 1890s. The eighteenth-century deposits may be associated with an early commercial enterprise which existed in this vicinity.
The site contains intact archaeological deposits and documentary evidence spanning a broad swath of the historical occupation of Annapolis. The site encapsulates the growth of the city of Annapolis as a commercial, industrial and residential center during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Data collected from the site can be useful in generating information on how the face of industry and commercial enterprises in Annapolis changed over time, how the city became a node in the early development of international trade routes, and the early development of the capitalist system and how these changes impacted the socio-economic status of families involved in these enterprises.
The site’s depositional integrity (intact features, and generally sequential depositional layers) greatly elevates its research potential, as does the strong occupational context. Based on the results of this investigation and the 1984 investigation in the playground, 18AP39 is recommended eligible for listing in the NRHP under both Criterion A and Criterion D. Under Criterion A, a site must demonstrate association with events that have made a significant contribution to broad patterns of history. Under Criterion D, a site must demonstrate the ability to yield information important to history or prehistory.
As significant archaeological deposits cannot be avoided by the proposed undertaking, it was recommended that a Phase III data recovery of significant portions of the site that will be adversely affected by the undertaking should be performed. Additionally, construction monitoring of deep construction was recommended given the potential for maritime resources (e.g., wharf/dock features, scuttled ship hull) to be preserved within the nineteenth century fill underlying the project area.
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