Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18CV91 Smith's St. Leonard
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
The Smith’s St. Leonard Site (18CV91), or Peterson Site, appears to have been the homelot of a tobacco plantation occupied during the 1st half of the 18th century in Calvert County, Maryland. The site is located on the Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum (JPPM) property near St. Leonard in rural Calvert County, Maryland. The site is situated at the southern edge of the park, on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Patuxent River and St. Leonard’s Creek. Soils at the site are Hambrook fine sandy loams.
The site was first identified during the course of a Phase I archeological survey in April of 1981. The survey was undertaken when the property was still under private ownership. However, the property owner had recently begun to recognize the historic significance of numerous archeological sites and historic resources located on the farm (at that time known as “Point Farm”). Not only had several prehistoric deposits been noted in the fields on the property (by local collectors), but the area played a prominent role during the War of 1812 and archival resources revealed that historic occupations relating to the 17th through 19th centuries should be present.
The April 1981 fieldwork entailed a variety of survey techniques employed based on the form of vegetation present in each area of the property and the visibility afforded by that vegetation. The field, within which 18CV91 was located was planted in crops that were quite high and, thus, visibility was poor. Survey of the area was primarily limited to traversing the perimeter of the field in search of artifacts and shell concentrations. Fortunately, 18CV91 was situated in a field edge area and though it was planted in crops and overgrown with weeds, the site was still located as a dense scatter of brick and shell. These concentrations were noted and 36 other historic artifacts were collected.
The ceramic sherds found on the surface included a tin-glazed earthenware sherd, a North Devon gravel-tempered sherd, 9 miscellaneous earthenware sherds, 1 piece of porcelain, an English Brown stoneware sherd, an English gray stoneware sherd, and 2 Rhenish sherds. The ceramic diversity present in such a small sample suggests occupation by a wealthy colonial family. The other artifacts are not described in the full Phase I report, but the field researchers noted that the quantity of brick suggested a substantial structure and that the foundation may have been preserved beneath the plowzone. The site was described a having tremendous research potential.
Documentary evidence suggests that Richard Smith Jr. built a residence at this location in 1711. Richard Smith, Jr. was the son of the first Attorney General of Maryland, Richard Smith, Sr. The elder Richard Smith acquired the 750 acre “St. Leonards” tract (on which the site is located) from Governor William Stone in 1663. Richard Smith Sr. is believed to have established his household at nearby site 18CV92 sometime shortly after acquiring the land. Richard Smith, Jr. is believed to have lived to the north at what is known as the King’s Reach Site, or 18CV83, until he built the more substantial dwelling at 18CV91. Richard Smith, Jr. would die only 4 years later in 1715.
After Richard Jr.’s death in 1715, the property was inherited by his son, Walter, who in turn left it to his son, John. After John’s death in 1754, the plantation fell into the ownership of absentee landlords, and the homelot was probably abandoned. Court records from the early 1770s (see synopsis report for 18CV92) indicate that the Smith house and surrounding outbuildings were in ruins by that time. Archaeological evidence of at least four structures associated with the homelot have been uncovered at the Smith’s St. Leonard Site.
Following acquisition of the “Point Farm” by the State of Maryland in 1983, a considerable amount of development work began being undertaken to create what is today known as Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum (JPPM). However, because of its peripheral location, no further work would be conducted at 18CV91 until 1999, when a small trash pit was uncovered during a shoreline stabilization project. The unusual artifacts recovered from this pit, when combined with the detailed documentary evidence available on the Smith family residency, led JPPM archeologists to make the site the subject of the museum’s annual Public Archeology Program a couple of years later.
In May 2002, the first extensive investigation of Site 18CV91 began. First, 117 shovel test pits (STPs) measuring approximately 30 centimeters in diameter were excavated at 8 meter intervals across the site. All soil was screened through hardware mesh, and all cultural materials were retained. This was followed by the excavation of seven 1.5 meter test squares and two 150 X 75 cm units excavated in areas where the STPs revealed artifact concentrations or buried features. Again, all soil was screened through hardware mesh, and all cultural materials were retained. However, in many cases only a 10% sample of shell, brick, and other bulk items from plowzone contexts was kept, after first being cleaned, counted, and weighed. The trash pit first uncovered in 1999 was fully excavated in 2002. All soils from this feature, the only one excavated in 2002, were dry-screened and then water-screened through fine window mesh.
Sub-plowzone features were uncovered in every test unit excavated in 2002. Again, with the exception of the trash pit, these were not excavated. In two of the units, portions of the brick foundation of the Smith house were found. The thickness of the foundation suggested that the house was a substantial structure. The probate inventories of Richard and Walter Smith indicate that the building was probably cruciform in shape, but there was not sufficient archaeological evidence to determine its size.
A smaller brick footing, possibly a chimney base, was found approximately 30 meters east of the Smith house. Documentary evidence suggested that this could be the location of a kitchen. Twenty meters to the north, the posthole of an earthfast building was uncovered. The function of this structure is uncertain, but it was surrounded by abundant oyster shell and domestic refuse. Another structural posthole for an earthfast building was found 35 meters further north. The combined archaeological and historical evidence suggested that a slave quarter had once stood there. Comparing the artifacts and features found at this structure with those uncovered at the Smiths’ own nearby residence could provide an opportunity to examine 18th-century social relations on the plantation.
Finally, several adjacent test units were opened to fully expose the trash pit uncovered in 1999. This revealed that the pit measured approximately 120 by 75 cm, and was about 35 cm deep. Based on a coin and other artifacts found in the pit, the deposit dated to sometime shortly after the mid-1740s. The types of artifacts recovered suggested that they came from the nearby kitchen.
A total of 115,090 artifacts were recovered from 18CV91 in 1999-2002. The vast majority of these consisted of oyster shell (62,165 pieces), brick (35,803), and mortar (11,707). Architectural items were most abundant near the Smith house, while shell and domestic artifacts were common near the presumed kitchen. The area around the supposed slave quarters produced fewer artifacts than did any of the other buildings.
The artifact assemblage from 18CV91 included 479 ceramic sherds. The majority of these were tin glazed earthenwares (61 sherds), various unidentified lead-glazed coarse earthenwares (15 sherds), and English brown and Rhenish blue and gray stonewares. Lesser amounts of porcelain (11 sherds), white salt glazed stoneware, Staffordshire-type slipware, various North Devon earthenwares, Buckley earthenware, and Manganese Mottled earthenware (1 sherd) were also recovered. A total of 411 glass fragments were found. Most came from bottles, but table glass and window glass (12 fragments) was also included. Four hundred sixteen white clay tobacco pipes fragments were found. Several were marked, including one made by Llewellin Evans that pre-dated the site.
A number of interesting artifacts were recovered from the trash pit first noted in 1999. Among these were two iron firebacks (one decorated with an eagle or griffin sitting in a tree-like object next to two shields, the other ornamented with a scroll design), the base of a copper-alloy chafing dish that was probably made in Germany, a George II halfpenny minted between 1740 and 1745, a copper-alloy button with a star design, a copper-alloy bridle boss, a length of iron chain, a whetstone, several dressed sandstone fragments (estimated at 5), bone knife handles (estimated at 2), a bone comb, and a number of straight pins (estimated 5). There were also 4,088 animal bones present, including a large drumfish jaw. Finally, four unusual prehistoric artifacts were found in the pit. These were a large rhyolite blade, a groundstone gorget, part of a pestle, and a smooth discoidal sandstone object with a trapezoidal profile that was possibly used as an abrader. The lack of debitage, prehistoric ceramics, or other incidental Native American artifacts in the pit suggests that these objects were collected by someone in the Smith household.
Unfortunately, no full site report has been completed for the 2002 excavation work at 18CV91, so there is no detailed artifact inventory. The tallies provided here and in the table above were derived from an analysis of the site assemblage conducted in 2007 as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant awarded to JPPM to analyze samples from their collection and create online capsule summaries of representative sites from the State of Maryland. Site 18CV91 was one of the sites selected and tallies for certain artifact classes are available.
Additional work was conducted at the Smith’s St. Leonard site in the spring of 2010, as part of the annual Archeological Society of Maryland field session in archeology and the JPPM public archeology program. A number of the features examined in the earlier study were examined in detail, however, a final site report has not yet been drafted.
In general, the archaeological record supported documentary evidence which indicates that the Smith’s St. Leonard Site was occupied from ca. 1711-1754. Only a couple of artifacts dating to before 1711 were found, and no creamware or other later 18th-century objects were recovered. The 2002 excavations were too limited in scope to reveal much about the appearance of the buildings which once stood on the site. However, the results of the 2010 field session at 18CV91 and potential future excavations should be able to provide such detail. The site still retains a tremendous amount of research potential related to Maryland colonial history and the interactions of African-American slave communities with the white landowners. It should be considered a significant site, capable of addressing ongoing research questions.
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