Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18BA564 Lee's Blacksmith Shop
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
Site 18BA564 is the archeological remains associated with the early 20th century Lee’s Blacksmith Shop in Cockeysville, Baltimore County. The site is situated south of the intersection of Warren and Bosley Roads and west of an unnamed stream that flows towards the Loch Raven Reservoir. Another unnamed stream runs along the south edge of the site. When the site was first examined in 2010, the property was covered by immature forest, with stone foundations visible adjacent to Warren Road, where the frame blacksmith shop once stood. Road construction has since buried much of the site under extensive road fill. Soils at the site are Glenville silt loams.
The former Lee’s Blacksmith Shop stood essentially abandoned (used sporadically as a workshop and/or garage by some owners) from the 1940s until 2003, when the roof collapsed and demolition became necessary. Documentary and cartographic sources provide no evidence of a blacksmith shop or any other standing structure at the site prior to 1900. The site sits within a parcel purchased by the Green family from the Ridgelys in 1889. The $300 purchase price of this 3 acre lot indicates that no structures were present on this lot at the time of the transfer. When purchasing the lot, the Greens took on a $700 mortgage from Benjamin R. Ridgely. That this mortgage was substantially larger than the lot purchase price suggests that the Greens intended to add improvements to their property at that time. This mortgage also required the Greens to maintain fire insurance on the improvements to their property, with Ridgely as the beneficiary.
The stipulation in the mortgage that this fire insurance be for at least $670 indicates that $670 was the value of the improvements existing at the time of the 1889 transaction. Although records of an 1889 fire insurance policy have not been found, and 1894 fire insurance policy on the Greens’ property has survived in later court records. This 1894 fire insurance policy indicates that the Greens did erect a new outbuilding on their property between 1889 and 1894. The new building was described as a “frame stable with loft 16 X 20 shingle roof with shed attached 16 X 15 board roof”. The value of the stable is listed as $150. Comparison of the size listed for this stable with the extant blacksmith shop foundations (see above) indicates that these were different buildings.
The Green’s property went to public sale in 1900 and was acquired by William H. Rinehart for $701 on September 6th of that year. Documents of the public sale reveal that the stable, a corn crib and springhouse were outbuildings present on the property at that time. Rinehart sold this property in 1907 to William K. Lee for $1,450. A brief notice of the sale in the Baltimore Sun noted that the property included unspecified “outbuildings”, leaving it unclear whether this included anything more than the stable, corn crib, and springhouse. However, the increase in price, suggests that Rinehart may have been responsible for the construction of the blacksmith shop between 1900 and 1907. Although there is no documentation pointing to Rinehart being involved in blacksmithing, if he was responsible for construction of the shop building he may have built it for other purposes or he may have leased it to a blacksmith.
It should be noted, however, that a pre-1907 use of the 18BA564 blacksmith shop seems unlikely due to the typical spacing of rural blacksmith shops of this period. Blacksmith shops in rural Baltimore County were typically spaced from 2 to 4 miles apart according to 1898 and 1915 atlases of the area. One of the shops depicted in these maps was only a mile from 18BA564: the Keys family ran a blacksmith’s shop in Warren from the 1840s up to 1906. A William Keys sold his family’s blacksmith shop to the Warren Manufacturing Company on December 5th, 1906. The 1900 Federal Census listed William Keys as a “horseshoer” living in Warren, which implies that he kept the blacksmith shop running at least until 1900. By contrast, the 1910 Federal Census listed William Keys as living in Baltimore city and working in a brass works there, which implies that he gave up working in the old family shop when he sold it to the company in 1906. That William K. Lee moved to Warren within months of this sale suggests that he leased the old Keys shop from the company in 1907. However, in 1921 the City Engineer’s appraisers noted that the Warren Manufacturing Company was leasing the old Keys blacksmith shop in Warren to a Frank Barrett, who lived on an adjacent lot. Though it is unclear what Barrett used the lot for, records indicate that he was not in the blacksmithing trade and, hence, the Warren smithy was no longer in use by 1921. According to Lee family recollections, William K. Lee leased the shop in Warren from 1907 until about 1920, when preparations began being made for the flooding of the Loch Raven Reservoir.
In 1907, William K. Lee purchased two lots (including the site) and their associated outbuildings at the corner of Warren and Bosley Roads from the Rineharts for $1,450. At the time of this purchase William K. Lee was 35 years old and supporting a growing family by his work as a blacksmith. William and his wife Elizabeth raised a large family in the residence within this property along Bosley Road (see synopsis report for 18BA565). After Elizabeth’s 1931 death, William remarried and continued to live on this property until 1942.
Information about Lee’s early blacksmithing career follows from a Baltimore Sun article published at the time of the 1907 purchase that referred to Lee as “of Dulaney’s Valley”. A the time of the 1900 census, William K. Lee was listed as a 28 year old blacksmith who was the head of a household living in a rented home in the 10th Election District of Baltimore County. This household included William, Elizabeth (his wife of two years) and their one year old son, Alfred. An adjacent household also included two balcksmiths: 33 year old Harry Bosley and 21 year old Ebert Anderson. Harry Bosley was married to William K. Lee’s older sister, Lillie. Given the proximity and relative ages of these three blacksmiths, it appears that both Lee and Anderson worked for Harry Bosley. The pattern of other households on this census page fits with the Baltimore Sun’s identification of Lee as “of Dulaney’s Valley”, placing the Bosley/Lee/Anderson blacksmith shop within the Matthews farm, along the Dulaney Valley Turnpike just east of the Gunpowder Falls. Other records confirming a shop at this location include atlases printed in 1877, 1898, and 1915 (which depict a combined blacksmith/wheelwright shop), and property appraisal records from the City of Baltimore’s purchase of the Matthews farm prior to flooding by Loch Raven Reservoir in 1922 (which note a blacksmith shop along the turnpike). In 1901, Harry and Lillie Bosley moved to Washington, DC, where Harry earned a doctor’s degree in veterinary medicine and ran a veterinary hospital for many years. William K. Lee appears to have stayed on as a blacksmith in the Dulaney shop until his move to Warren in 1907.
It is not clear whether the blacksmith shop structure at 18BA564 was built by Rinehart before the 1907 sale or by Lee after the 1907 sale. One of the blacksmith’s grandsons (William K. Lee III) recalled that the family referred to the house on Bosley Road as “the old home place” and that the shed located next to Warren Road (18BA564) was used as his grandfather’s blacksmith shop in the 1920s and 1930s. However, this was not the first blacksmith shop his grandfather worked in, as William K. Lee III recalled family stories of his grandfather working in a shop in Warren until the reservoir flooded that location. This oral history fits well with the chronology of the Keys blacksmith shop in Warren, so it appears that William K. Lee leased the former Keys blacksmith shop from 1907 to about 1920 and then moved his business to 18BA564.
William K. Lee III, who was born in 1931, moved with his parents to Reisterstown about 1935 and has few memories of his grandfather’s blacksmith shop. William K. Lee III recalled visiting the shop on Warren Road with his father in 1935 or 1936, at which time his grandfather was spending about half of each day shoeing horses and the other half repairing automobiles. William K. Lee III stated that by about 1939 to 1941 his grandfather had stopped doing blacksmith work and was transitioning to carpentry. He recalled that his grandfather built fences and performed other outdoor carpentry jobs, rather than converting the blacksmith shop to a carpentry shop. Unfortunately, the Lee family does not have photographs of the old home place or the blacksmith shop, nor do they have any account books from William K. Lee’s blacksmithing business. A few other documents and memories provide some information on William K. Lee’s blacksmithing activities, as reviewed below.
Census records for 1900 through 1930 have been located for the Lee household. As discussed above, the 1900 Federal Census shows that before this 1907 purchase, William K. Lee had been working as a blacksmith with his brother-in-law (Henry Bosley) in a shop along the Dulaney Valley Turnpike, four miles southeast of Warren. The 1910 and 1920 censuses listed William K. Lee as a blacksmith working in his own shop. A 1915 county directory also listed Lee as a blacksmith. The 1930 census listed his occupation as “carpenter”, which, with his grandson’s memories of Lee working as a carpenter about 10 years later, indicates that Lee found the need to be flexible in order to find work during the Great Depression. However, on William K. Lee’s 1942 death certificate his wife, Ruby Hall Lee, reported his “usual occupation” as “Blacksmith”, indicating that Lee’s identity as a blacksmith was lifelong.
As outlined above, it is believed that Lee leased the blacksmith shop in Warren from 1907 to about 1920 and centered his smithing business there. However, this scenario does not rule out the possibility that Lee also maintained a shop at 18BA564 during these years. A 1918 tax list of Lee’s property describes an “other building” in addition to the Lee family residence and includes “Business Assets” valued at $75.00 and in 1919 of “tools” valued at $100, suggesting he may indeed have operated out of both Warren and Cockeysville. However, $175 worth of livestock in the 1919 assessment could also suggest a stable.
William K. Lee’s flexible approach to his blacksmithing business (transitioning between smithing, carpentry, and auto repair as needed) appears to have been profitable. In 1907, he purchased the family’s “home place” without a mortgage. When he died at age 70, only a few years after the end of the Great Depression, he left an estate unencumbered with debt, including a house on York Road (as he and Ruby had sold the old home place on Bosley Road a month before his death), two undeveloped lots in Cockeysville (purchased in 1923-1924), and an automobile. Practicing an age-old craft, he had forged an essentially middle-class life. William and Elizabeth Lee raised eight children (5 boys and 3 girls) in the old home place and all 8 children grew up and established middle-class families.
Oral history research reveals that the owners of the property since 1942 appear to have used the structure at 18BA564 mostly for a garage or storage facility, although some use as a hobby workshop was also noted. The blacksmith shop building was still standing in 1979 when it was documented by a local historian photographically and with a brief written description. Unfortunately, an automobile ran into the southwest corner of the building in 2002. Although a repair was made, the roof collapsed during a major snowstorm in February of 2003. Shortly after the roof collapse, the property owner contracted with a local carpenter to dismantle the superstructure of the blacksmith shop building, with all construction materials removed from the site for reuse or recycling.
The property owner during the structure’s dismantling, Ms. L.S. Lyons, had vivid recollections of the structure and was able to provide a fairly detailed description of the structure (as she knew it) to oral historians. The building was divided into two rooms by an east-west interior wall. The northern room was larger, while the smaller southern room contained features from the blacksmith’s use (the forge and chimney, an adjacent coal bin, and a work bench) and also had a storage loft overhead. Both rooms had wooden flooring. The building had two entry doorways, both into the larger northern room: a large sliding door opened across the west wall, facing Warren Road, while a smaller, hinged door was located in the east wall. Five windows provided natural light and ventilation for the shop, with two on the west wall and three on the east wall. The smaller southern room had one window on each of the east and west walls, while the larger northern room had two windows on the east wall and one window on the west wall. Electrical service to the shop had been installed prior to Ms. Lyon’s 1979 purchase of the property. Shelves and hooks of varying size were attached to the walls for storage. A variety of movable objects were present in the building when Ms. Lyons purchased the property and she retrieved some of these objects after the roof collapsed, including horseshoes, tools, and toys.
The site was first examined archeologically in 2010 during a Phase I survey of the (then) proposed construction area for improvements to Warren Road and two intersecting county roads. These investigations were conducted as the Baltimore County Bureau of Highway design was applying for a joint federal/state nontidal wetland and waterway permit for the project. This federal/state permit authorization requires review of the project for compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended in 1980 and 1992, and with state historic preservation legislation. In the case of 18BA564, this work eventually proceeded to Phase II in June of 2010.
Phase I archeological work at the site entailed surface examination and the excavation of four shovel test pits (STPs). Two were circular and measured 40 cm diameter. Two STPs placed within the visible stone foundations of the former blacksmith’s shop were 30.5 cm (1 ft) squares. All soil from STPs was screened through hardware cloth. Artifacts were recovered during Phase I work, but they are discussed below along with the Phase II materials.
The two STPs within the foundation revealed dark humic soils with a high density of metal and other artifacts. The other two STPs (placed south of the foundation) confirmed disturbance of this area by prior grading. In addition, a water supply line for a nearby dwelling was found to cut from southwest to northeast across this southern part of the site. The landscape north of the foundations was relatively level, but excavation there was not undertaken during the Phase I as disturbance from a modern water distribution line was present only 6.1 m north of the stone foundations. Late 20th century widening of Warren Road had disturbed the landscape immediately west of the foundation. Essentially the Phase I work showed that any potentially intact portions of the site lay inside or within a few meters of the stone foundations. Phase II investigations were, thus, focused on this core area of the site.
Phase II work combined the mapping of surface features with excavation of 1 m square controlled test units. All Phase II work was conducted on a grid aligned to the angles of the stone foundation remnants and established by transit, compass, and tape. The stone shop foundations measured 9.45 by 5.5 meters (31 X 18 ft) and were situated adjacent to Warren Road. The southwest corner and portions of the south and west walls were not visible on the surface, but probing with the point of a trowel indicated that intact foundation walls were present at a shallow depth. The shop foundations were composed of stone walls that were 46 cm (1.5 ft) wide and pointed with gray, cement-based mortar. These walls included four external walls forming a rectangle and an internal wall dividing the structure into two equal interior areas, each approximately 4 X 4.6 m. Within the southeast corner of the foundation, the base of the former forge was visible. It measured approximately 140 cm by 140 cm in extent, although the corners were not entirely clear due to loose stones and sediments covering most of the intact portions of this feature. It had been severely impacted by vandalism in November of 2009. It appeared to consist of three poured concrete elements with brick and stone elements as well.
Five 1 X 1 m units were excavated with shovel and trowel by natural and/or cultural stratigraphic units. Strata over 10 cm thick were excavated by arbitrary 10 cm levels. Excavation continued to at least 10 cm below the lowest level containing artifacts. Photographs were taken and plan views drawn as new stratigraphic contexts were exposed. After completion of each test unit, at least one wall of the unit was trowelled clean and photographed. Measured drawings with soil descriptions were done of at least one wall in each test unit and soils in these profiles were described using standard terminology for textures and colors. All excavated soil was screened through hardware cloth and any artifacts found were retained for identification. All excavations were then backfilled.
Placement of Phase II excavation units within the site core area was constrained by two non-archeological factors. The landowner provided researchers with access to the site and permission to clear leaf debris and underbrush, with the stipulation that wild raspberry plants and other wild perennial shrubs and trees not be disturbed. Another factor constraining the placement of units was the location of the Area of Potential Effects (APE) for the roadwork. Phase II excavations were limited to the portion of the site within the APE. Given these constraints, test units were placed within the site core area so as to sample the variability evident from surface features and the Phase I testing. This testable area included part of the foundations (divided into 2 sections by the interior stone foundation wall), the adjacent strips of roadside land north and south of the foundations, and a narrow strip of land immediately east of the foundation. Two test units were placed within the foundations, with one south and one north of the interior partition wall. Two more test units were placed along the exterior of the foundation wall, adjacent to the forge base feature in the southeast corner of the foundations. One unit was placed north of the foundations, as this area had not been tested during the Phase I survey. No further testing was done south of the foundations, as the Phase I STPs in this area had indicated the locale was disturbed and would yield very few artifacts.
Excavations within and near the blacksmith shop foundations revealed that during the construction of the shop, the natural topography of the building site was initially leveled, with the more southwesterly areas cut more deeply into natural subsoil. The rest of the building site was perhaps leveled-off with disturbed B-horizon sediments. Broader excavation within and adjacent to the shop foundations would be needed to confirm and/or improve upon this interpretation.
The center of blacksmithing activities would have been the forge. In many respects, the forge feature fits with historical and archeological descriptions of forges. The most intact elements of the feature are large stones joined with sand/lime mortar that form a box (with a footprint size typical for such features), which appears to be filled with rubble and covered with sand. However, brick elements with attached cement mortar and poured concrete elements are atypical. It appears that approximately 60 cm of the upper part of the forge feature has been removed. Despite the loss of this upper portion of the forge, the remaining portion of this feature has the potential to contain significant information about the construction, use, and possible re-construction of this feature. Detailed excavation is needed to clarify the construction of this feature, particularly whether the tue-iron/tuyre is extant and what its positioning was, whether the forge was reconstructed or reconfigured, and whether the forge was built as an integral part of the building or added later.
Excavations within the foundations revealed a series of cultural deposits (between 20 and 40 cm in thickness) overlying natural subsoil. Very high densities of artifacts were found within these cultural deposits, primarily ferrous metal debris from blacksmithing/farriery activities. Some disturbance from animal burrowing was found, with most of the burrowing found in the subsoil. Apparently, the dense deposits of sharp metal objects discouraged the animals from burrowing through more cultural layers than necessary to reach the subsoil. Thus, the integrity of the cultural deposits appeared to be quite good.
Some or all of these cultural deposits within the shop foundations formed a sub-floor setting. The landowner (L.S. Lyons) stated that the shop had a wooden floor across the entire interior when she purchased the property in 1979, and that the floor remained in place until it was removed during the 2003 dismantling of the shop superstructure. The presence of a wooden floor in a blacksmith’s shop is not unexpected based on historical documentation and work at other archeological sites.
Interpreting these cultural deposits under wooden floorboards requires recognizing that such subfloor settings have different site formation processes than dirt floors within buildings or outdoor settings adjacent to buildings. Subfloor assemblages are usually attributable to objects falling between floorboards during the use of the site, but other factors (such as maintenance activities, repair of the structure, rodent burrowing, structure dismantling, on-site dumping after abandonment, etc.) can also come into play. Animal burrowing and post-dismantling dumping have had little negative effect at 18BA564, so the subfloor contexts appear to be the result of the accretion during use by the other processes.
Distinctive differences between the cultural deposits in a test unit within the foundations of the southern-most room of the structure raise the possibility that this room had a dirt floor, at least for part of the use-life of the building. One or more replacements of the wooden floor, with or without changes in the location of the interior room partition, may have provided opportunities for the more intense deposition seen in this test unit. Excavation of a larger sample of the building would be needed to answer these questions.
Excavation adjacent to, but outside of the foundations revealed a different series of cultural deposits, more integrated with the surrounding natural stratigraphy. Lower densities of artifacts were found within these cultural deposits. These artifacts are more related to the construction and dismantling of the building, with evidence also of disposal of waste materials from the shop and storage of larger items to be reused in the blacksmithing operation. No disturbance from animal burrowing was found and the integrity of the cultural deposits appears to be quite good.
A total of 7,570 artifacts were recovered during the course of the Phase I and II research at 18BA564. The vast majority of these (all but two quartz flakes) were historic in nature. The historic assemblage consisted of 6,404 activity items, 1,026 architectural artifacts, 7 clothing items, 37 kitchen-related artifacts, 2 arms objects, and 92 miscellaneous objects (more modern materials). The activity items were 1,968 items evidencing blacksmithing activities (816 pieces of slag, 391 metal scraps, 382 pieces of bar stock, 358 pieces of hardware, 9 tools, 9 auto parts, 3 tacks, and fuel), 4,408 horseshoes and other farriery items, 23 lighting-related items, 3 earthenware toys (marbles), and 2 unknown objects. Architectural items included 158 pieces of window glass, 17 cut nails, 24 roofing nails, 230 wire nails, 3 other nails, 307 pieces of roofing shingle, 221 pieces of tar paper, and smaller amounts of other architectural debris. The clothing items were a fragment of light brown cloth, 4 shoe leather fragments, and 2 buttons. Kitchen-related artifacts were 2 ceramic sherds (1 redware, 1 whiteware), 30 glass container fragments, 2 metal bottle closures, and 3 animal bones. The arms objects were .22 caliber brass cartridges.
Overall the excavations conducted to date within the core area of 18BA564 have revealed a variety of cultural features and deposits related to the early 20th century blacksmithing enterprise that is documented to have been undertaken there. These cultural features and deposits display good integrity and, thus, the potential to yield additional useful information about Lee’s Blacksmith Shop. Phase III data recovery was recommended by the Phase I/II researchers if the site could not be avoided during road construction. As of early 2015, Baltimore County was making modifications to the proposed road work to avoid the site and preserve it in place.
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