Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18PR677 Oak Creek S
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
The Oak Creek S Site (18PR677) consists of the archeological remains of the mid 19th-mid 20th century Bird household, including a collapsed residential structure and 2 outbuildings, north of Upper Marlboro in Prince George’s County. The site is situated on a pronounced knoll overlooking a stream and associated low-lying poorly drained terrain. At the time of the site’s discovery, the yard s to the house were overgrown and covered with semi-mature deciduous trees. An unimproved road crossed the western and northern sides of the site and likely served as access roads to the old Bird house and surrounding property. Soils at the site are primarily Collington and Wist sandy loams, along with some Shrewsbury loam.
Site 18PR677 is situated 1,575 meters northwest of the historic Bowieville Mansion (MIHP# PG-74A-18), the manor house of the 19th century Bowie family plantation. The builder of Bowieville was Mary Mackall Bowie, daughter of Maryland Governor Robert Bowie. Mary M. Bowie was born in 1776, was married twice, and was also widowed twice. She was first married to Turner Wootton from 1794 until his death in 1796. Together they had one son, William Turner Wootton. She then married her cousin, Thomas Contee Bowie, in 1800. He died thirteen years later in 1813. Mary M. Bowie and Thomas Contee Bowie had several children together.
In 1815, Governor Robert Bowie was awarded the deed for 329 acres he bought from a Thomas Buchanan in 1807. Buchanan was the trustee appointed by the Prince George’s Circuit Court in the Chancery cause over the estate of one Dr. Robert Pottinger. The land was described as, “All that dwelling plantation of the said Robert Pottinger containing 275 acres and 54 acres vacant land”. It is not known where on this plantation Dr. Pottinger resided. In 1818, Governor Bowie devised the 275 acres to his daughter Mary M. Bowie.
The same year Mary M. Bowie inherited Dr. Pottinger’s land from her father she bought the adjacent property from her son, William Turner Wootton. This conveyance consisted of 510.25 acres out of various tracts that William had inherited from the paternal side of his family. By combining the tracts she received from her father and son, Mary M. Bowie created an 853 acre plantation she called “Bowieville”. Soon after consolidating the properties, she began construction of an extravagant mansion on that portion of the land she bought from her son. Little is known about whether the various parcels that made up Bowieville were actually occupied by their various owners, with the exception of Dr. Pottinger. It is likely that tenant farmers lived on some of the parcels.
The Bowieville plantation did not remain in operation for long, for Mary M. Bowie died unexpectedly in 1826. The plantation was left to her children and husband, Thomas Contee Bowie. The 1828 tax list for Collington and Western Branch Hundreds in Prince George
S County lists the heirs of Mary M. Bowie as having possession of a total of 849 acres.
Mary M. Bowie’s son, Robert Bowie of Cedar Hill, was hard pressed to settle his mother’s accounts, forcing him to sell much of her personal property. This property included numerous slaves living on the plantation. Robert Bowie also became indebted to many neighbors and family members by trying to buy his sister’s portions of Bowieville, forcing him to mortgage the property several times. In 1836, Robert Bowie was forced to sell portions of his real estate holdings in order to raise enough funds to meet his debts. In 1846, a Chancery Court cause was brought against him by Upton and Brooke Beall. Exhibits summoned in the cause included a confirmation survey by Robert Young on a 115 acre tract of Bowieville conveyed to Robert C. Brooke by Robert Bowie in 1836. The result of the Chancery cause was a court decree requiring the sale of the remainder of the Bowieville plantation.
The 115 acre tract that Young surveyed became part of a conveyance of a 349¼ acre tract deeded from Robert C. Brooke to William Z. Beall in 1853. That same year, Otho B. Beall bequeathed his land to his brothers Zachariah B. Beall, William Z. Beall, and Washington J. Beall. In 1858, William Z. Beall bequeathed his land to his nephew, Otho B. Beall (son of his brother, Washington). Again, the historic Beall House is situated just to the south of the site. This land remained intact under Beall family ownership until 1886, when Otho B. Beall and his wife, Alice M. Beall, conveyed 78 acres to Nannie Ogle Bird, wife of Dr. Benjamin Bird. This tract was added to 87½ acres of land Nannie O. Bird acquired in two previous conveyances. In 1871, she was conveyed a 61½ acre tract by her husband. Dr. Bird had purchased the land from Mareen T. Lamar in 1867, and seven years later, Nannie would acquire an additional 27 acres out of Lamar’s estate. These tracts were contiguous, totaling approximately 166 acres and including the location of 18PR677.
Dr. Benjamin Bird was born in 1841, near Owensville in Anne Arundel County. Dr. Bird married Nannie Ogle Hodges in 1868. The property owned by Dr. Bird and Nannie is known to have been farmed by resident tenants living in two houses. He was a well-respected doctor practicing in Prince George’s County. In fact, he maintained an office just off the front of the house. Dr. Bird also kept riding horses close by when a birth was expected. At one point in his career, Dr. Bird served as the Secretary of the County Board of Health. He died at age 61 after battling with a bout of malaria and was buried in nearby St. Barnabus Cemetery.
Nannie O. Bird retained ownership of the property until 1915, when she conveyed it to her daughter, Marie H. Bird. In 1926, Marie H. Bird conveyed 60 acres of the property to Karoline Klager, leaving her with approximately 105½ acres. Marie H. Bird died in 1954 and in the years that followed, the Bird properties were further subdivided and sold off. The remainder of the Beall lands (those portions not conveyed to the Birds) remained largely intact and under the ownership of the Beall family until 2002.
By the late 20th century, many of the portions of the Bowieville plantation tract that had been sold off during the 19th and early 20th century were being re-assembled into a development tract. Eventually, a 925 acre parcel (including the site location) was assembled and plans were proposed to construct a combined golf course and residential development on much of the former Bowieville plantation lands. Survey of the 925 acre Oak Creek Club property began in 1999, due to the developers’ application for various required permits. Specific to Site 18PR677, Phase I work in the vicinity did not begin until 2004, when the property developers sought a wetland permit through the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Department of the Environment, which ultimately triggered Section 106 review of the country club plans and an eventual Phase II examination of the site.
Phase I work in 2004 entailed the excavation of nearly 3,500 shovel test pits placed at 15.2 m (50 ft) intervals, thirty-five of which led to the discovery of 18PR677. Shovel testing revealed that site stratigraphy generally consisted of two or three strata. This stratigraphy generally consisted of a thin layer of loam overlying a plowzone of silty sand which, in turn, was situated above a sandy clay subsoil. Subsurface finds, when present, were generally confined to plowzone soils.
The site revealed both historic and prehistoric components. The prehistoric component of the site was composed of a lithic scatter. Contiguous positive shovel tests included quartz primary waste, rhyolite secondary waste, and quartz primary and secondary waste. Elsewhere on the site isolated prehistoric artifacts recovered included quartzite primary waste, quartz primary waste, and two diagnostic projectile points. These points included Lamoka and Otter Creek points.
The historic component included architecture, domestic/kitchen-related, personal, and other miscellaneous artifacts. Diagnostic 19th and early 20th century artifacts included blue transfer-printed whiteware, manganese-tinted container glass, and blue-gray decorated stoneware. Other artifacts recovered include clear, brown, and aqua container glass fragments, molded milk glass fragments, whiteware, redware, porcelain, flat glass, brick fragments, mortar and cement fragments, window glass fragments, coal, clinker, charcoal, miscellaneous iron and lead fragments, and a belt buckle. One piece of faunal material, an opossum humerus, was also recovered. A standing structure, the historic Bird house, sits in a ruinous state on a knoll in the western portion of the site. In addition to the Bird House, a historic well (modified during the modern period) was identified and designated “Feature 1”. Modern artifacts were also recovered in shovel tests including flooring tile fragments, plastic fragments, and clay pigeon fragments. Based on the historic Bird family occupation of the site, Phase II testing was recommended.
Phase II work was carried out at 18PR677 later in 2004. Phase II work entailed the excavation of just over 140 STPs spaced apart at 18.3, 9.1, and 4.6 m (60, 30, and 15 ft) intervals. STPs were excavated manually, using spade shovels and trowels. The STPs were also excavated stratigraphically in order to maintain vertical control over the artifacts recovered. The soils removed were dry-screened in the field using hardware cloth. Cultural materials recovered during the screening process were retained for analysis and bagged according to provenience (i.e. by site number, STP coordinate, and stratigraphic or feature designation). The resulting material recovery was plotted on a field map in order to display the distribution of artifacts. A soil profile was also prepared on a standardized form for each STP to document soil characteristics, strata depths, and artifacts recovered per stratum. Soils were described by texture and color using standard methods and nomenclature.
Approximately half of these STPs produced positive artifact recoveries. Based on these positive STP locations, Site 18PR677 was estimated to have a dimension of 64 m (210 ft) north-south by 82.3 m (270 ft) east-west. The artifacts were fairly evenly distributed over the site area, but a few isolated shovel tests in the northern portion of the site did produce higher artifact counts than average. After examining the nature and distribution of the artifact recovery, seven formal test units were excavated: two to the south of the Bird house and 5 strategically placed to the north of the dwelling.
Test units were 91 cm square and were excavated manually, using flat shovels and trowels. These units were also excavated stratigraphically in order to maintain control over the vertical provenience of artifacts recovered. Selected strata in excess of 7.62 cm (3 in) were further excavated by arbitrary levels, which generally ranged in thickness from 5.08 to 10.16 cm (2 to 4 in). All excavated, non-feature soils were dry-screened in the field using hardware mesh. In the case of deeply excavated units (where safety became a concern), exploratory windows were initiated in validating the presence of subsoil. A standard report form was completed for each excavated stratum or arbitrary level within a stratum per test unit. As with shovel testing, soil characteristics, stratum depths and recovered cultural materials were documented on these forms. Included in the documentation of test unit soils was the preparation of a hand-drawn soil profile, which presented a more accurate view of the stratigraphy encountered. Only one profile was prepared for each test unit excavated and generally involved the wall with the clearest and most representative stratigraphy. Black and white photography was also used to document profiles.
Special excavation and documentation procedures were followed when possible cultural features were thought to have been identified within test units. Within reason, the overall goal was to expose the horizontal and vertical extent of these features. During the handling of potential features, a thorough documentation process was employed and included plan view hand-drawn sketches followed by photographs. In a few instances, soil samples were retained for possible examination in the laboratory. These samples were to be water-screened through 1/16 inch hardware mesh if a feature designation was made.
Slightly over 65 shovel tests and all 7 test units produced positive artifact recoveries. Over 2,100 artifacts were recovered. The full Phase II assemblage consisted of 14 activity items (hardware), 1,073 architectural artifacts (including 110 pieces of brick, 12 chunks of concrete, 553 pieces of window glass, 5 hand-wrought nails, 393 unidentified nails), 2 clothing items (a belt buckle and scissors), 521 kitchen-related artifacts (including 113 ceramic sherds, 376 container glass fragments, 2 mason jar lids, 11 faunal objects, and 19 miscellaneous objects), 1 personal item (a rubber comb fragment), 4 tobacco-related artifacts (4 kaolin pipe pieces), 513 miscellaneous objects (including 376 pieces of coal/clinker, 1 piece of charcoal, and 25 modern objects), and 12 prehistoric lithics. Ceramic sherds included 6 miscellaneous earthenware, 77 whiteware, 6 Rockingham, 3 yelloware, 11 redware, 3 ironstone, 27 porcelain, 1 Albany slip stoneware, and 9 miscellaneous stoneware sherds. No intact features or buried 19th century artifact deposits were discovered within the site area.
According to the material record, Site 18PR677 was occupied during the 19th and 20th centuries. The temporal focus of this domestic occupation was between the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time that overlapped with the Bird family’s ownership of the property. This temporal assessment was supported by the recovery of Albany slip, transfer-printed and sponge-decorated whiteware, Rockingham, yelloware, ironstone, manganese-tinted bottle glass, and coal. Only a few modern artifacts were recovered from the site, which suggested that a post-1950s occupation of the Bird house was minimal at best. Archival research established that Dr. Bird built an office adjacent to the house. However, the location of this structure was not readily apparent in the material record. In terms of artifacts recovered, Dr. Bird’s medical practice was not recognizable either. Only two potential medical items were recovered: scissors and a fragment of a glass tube.
Based on the timer period represented and the potential linkage to a rural county medical practitioner (a little studied context), 18PR677 was thought to have potential research value. The research potential of the site, however, was dramatically reduced by a lack of integrity. No intact cultural features or buried artifact deposits were discovered in the site area. Thus, instead of recovering sealed layers of 19th century domestic artifacts, the recovery was mixed with a few prehistoric and 18th century materials, as well as 20th century artifacts, including some modern items. This mix was clearly related to natural disturbances (such as active erosion and bioturbation), as well as cultural forms (including excavation, grading, landscaping, and plowing) associated with 20th century occupation of the property. In addition, the overall artifact recovery was in poor condition. Specimens were highly fragmented, metal was largely corroded, and faunal remains were few. The site is not a significant archeological resource.
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