Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18ST707 Anketill's Neck
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
Anketill’s Neck (18ST707) is an archeological site onboard the Naval Air Station Patuxent River that includes both a historic component dating to around 1650 to 1675 and a prehistoric component dating to the Terminal Archaic through the Late Woodland periods. The site is situated on the slopes and level top of a ravine that runs into a cove of Pearson Creek. A spring flowed from the bottom of the ravine. Some artifacts have washed down from the upper, level portions of the site into the marshy areas along the creek bank. Thick greenbriers, poison ivy, and hanging vines grow in the southern end of the site and close to a paved road. Much of the present forest cover in the surrounding landscape is secondary growth of mixed pine and hardwood. Some areas contain relatively mature hardwood stands of oak, hickory, and beech with and understory of dogwood, holly, and sweetgum. The soils at the site are mostly well-drained Mattapex and Mattapeake types, but there are places where the underlying clays are close to the surface, trapping water after rains.
During the 17th century, the general site location was associated with a Francis Anketill, from whom the site draws its name. Anketill was probably born in London around 1625. He came to Maryland in 1641 as an indentured servant brought by Thomas Cornwallis, one of the leading investors in early Maryland. He appears occasionally in the Maryland records in the 1640s, witnessing deeds or appearing in court cases. One of these documents suggests that in 1647 Anketill was in the employ of Nicholas Harvey, a wealthy planter. In 1647, for reasons we can only guess at, he was present to witness the dying words of Governor Leonard Calvert. Calvert’s commission from Cecilius Calvert authorized him to name his own successor should he die in office, and as he lay dying on June 9, 1647, he appointed Thomas Greene, “As by the oaths of Mrs Margaret & Mary Brent, Francis Anketill, & James Linsey (who were all then present wth him att the same time) is averred to be true”.
After he worked off his passage, Anketill may have gone to Virginia for a while. No search has been made of the records of the Northern Neck counties, but he is mentioned in one Lancaster County, Virginia court case, and his name appears on a list compiled by a local historian of people who left the Northern Neck for Maryland. In the 17th century, many people moved back and forth between the two Chesapeake colonies, so it would certainly not be unusual if Anketill had lived in Virginia for a time.
The first indication of a connection between Francis Anketill and the site location comes from 1654. In that year, Anketill leased a property then “commonly known” as Anketill’s Neck from William Eltonhead for rent of “one Barrell of Sound Indian Corn”. Since the property was already known as Anketill’s Neck in 1654, one can assume that Francis Anketill had been in residence for some time. In 1650 he had become involved with Eltonhead in a curious legal matter, in which Anketill’s complaint that he had lost livestock led Eltonhead to slander certain leading men of the colony, landing himself before the court. The court records of witnesses to the exchange suggest that Anketill was already living on “that Neck” sometime between 1647 and 1650.
Francis Anketill did well for himself in Maryland. In 1659 he claimed headrights to 500 acres of land on the basis of transporting himself, his wife, his brother, and two servants to the colony (100 acres per person). In reality, Anketill was himself transported to Maryland by Thomas Cornwallis, who had returned to England and was no longer around to protest. Everyone else had likely forgotten Anketill’s origins. Using his ill-gotten headrights, Anketill patented 500 acres of land on Harris’ Creek, a tributary of the Choptank River. The Anketills may never have lived on this land, which they treated more as an investment than a plantation. By 1692 the family had sold all of their Eastern shore holdings, investing the proceeds in more property in St. Mary’s County. Francis Anketill appears several times in the county court records over the 1654 to 1674 period for routine matters of debts, stray livestock, and the like, and he served for a time as Justice of the Peace.
Francis Anketill died early in 1675. His probate inventory survives and lists two indentured servants, James Nicholas (age 16) with three years to serve, and John Benson (age 15) with six years to serve. In a box within a trunk were kept one gold and two silver rings, reflecting the Anketill’s rising wealth. Anketill owned 12 cattle and 2 horses, and he had 5 barrels of corn in storage. The household goods were rather limited: 5 pewter vessels, 2 iron pots, a copper kettle, a frying pan, a tin skillet, 2 glass case bottles, 2 round glass bottles, and only 3 ceramic vessels (two tankards and a jug).
The inventory provides some information about the sort of house maintained by Anketill. It begins, “In the old house,” which suggests that the house at Anketill’s plantation had not been replaced since it was built in about 1650. The furniture in the first section of the inventory includes a table, a “wainscote Couche”, a sealskin trunk, and an old feather bed. Three guns are said to be “upon the chimney”. The next section of the inventory begins, “Item in the small lodging room”. This surely means that the Anketills lived in a “hall-parlor” house, divided into a larger, heated room called the hall and a smaller, unheated room called the parlor or the chamber. This room contained a bedstead with curtains, a chair, a table “with a drawer”, and a chest full of clothes. After the description of the household goods, the inventory lists the servants and livestock, and then “a parcel of tob. in a Caske and upon a Loft flower”. The placement of the entry makes it uncertain whether the loft where flour was stored was in the house or in a barn, but since it contained only flour, it was most likely not in the main house. So, the Anketill’s house does not seem to have had lofts, unless perhaps there was a partial one used only as a sleeping platform.
Francis Anketill’s will was written in 1673 and proved on February 18, 1675. The land on the Eastern Shore was divided among his three sons, and the leased land at Anketill’s Neck was left to the eldest Francis Jr. Unfortunately for the heir, the status of the land at Anketill’s Neck was far from clear in 1675. William Eltonhead had died in 1655 leading a loyalist attack against the Puritans who had taken over government of the colony from the Calverts’ deputies. His widow, Jane Eltonhead, inherited his lands, and in 1658 she took Francis Anketill to court, with the result that the terms of his lease were restated and enrolled in the court record. After Jane died in 1659, her property was disputed among her various heirs and several lawsuits were filed, but in 1668, 600 acres of Little Eltonhead Manor were purchased by Charles Calvert. Calvert was heir to the proprietary and became the governor. He married Jane Sewall and became the master of the Mattapany-Sewell estate. He then set about acquiring more land in the vicinity.
Charles Calvert did not wish to let his land to tenants but preferred that it be worked by his own servants. He was not agreeable when Francis Anketill, Jr., set about trying to renew the lease on Anketill’s Neck. Anketill tried to claim that he had tried to pay the heriot that would have allowed him to inherit the tenement under the old lease, but Calvert claimed it had not been paid and that anyway Anketill was years behind on the rent. Calvert took control of the land.
After the imposing Charles Calvert had returned to England, and had deeded Mattapany to his stepson Nicholas Sewall, Francis Jr. sued for his right to take up the lease. Sewall bought off Anketill’s claim by giving him two servants and 250 acres of land elsewhere. These events mark the last appearance of the Anketill’s Neck leasehold in the records, and indeed the property was probably vacant for centuries after 1675.
The next sign of any activity on the Anketill’s Neck Site is an aerial photograph from the 1930s, which seems to show a small shed within or just south of the site. Since the area around the site was agricultural, the shed was probably related to agricultural activity. The site began its current role as part of a naval installation in the middle of the 20th century.
The site was first identified archeologically in 1998-1999 during one in a series of shovel test surveys carried out along the margins of the tidal creeks at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. This work was carried out to assist in managing the development of the air station and management of its cultural resources. Shovel test pits (STPs) were excavated along transects extending away from the shoreline to a distance of 60 meters. The transects were 7.5 meters apart and the shovel tests were dug at 7.5 meter intervals along them. Where terrain permitted, the area within 60 meters of Goose Creek, Harper’s Creek, and Person Creek was covered with a grid of shovel test at 7.5 meter intervals. These surveys identified 32 new archeological sites at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, including Site 18ST707.
Shovel tests at 18ST707 encountered both prehistoric and Colonial artifacts. Prehistoric materials from the site included 7 sherds of Mockley plain pottery (Middle Woodland), 4 sherds of Townsend series pottery (Late Woodland), 1 chert biface fragment, 25 pieces of quartz debitage, 8 pieces of quartzite debitage, 3 pieces of chert debitage, and 101 grams of fire-cracked rock. Colonial artifacts were recovered as well, including 1 window lead, 17 handwrought nails, 44 unidentified nails, handmade bricks (not enumerated - counted as 2 architectural items in the table above),1 gravel-tempered earthenware sherd, 1 buff-bodied earthenware sherd, 1 Midlands purple earthenware, a Camden sherd, 13 redware sherds, 4 Rhenish stoneware sherds, 1 hand-blown olive green bottle glass fragment, 4 white clay tobacco pipe fragments, and 6 terra cotta pipe stem fragments. Some more modern materials were encountered as well, likely attributable to the aforementioned outbuilding visible in 1930s photographs of the area. The site as a whole was defined as measuring about 100 meters east-west by 135 meters north-south. The colonial artifacts were concentrated in an area measuring about 45 X 45 meters approximately in the center of the site.
Phase II testing at the site was carried out in November of 2008. The location of the site was not, at that time, threatened by any impending construction, but Naval Air Station Pax River was embarking on long-range planning efforts that might affect the site in the future. The Phase II testing at 18ST707 consisted of shovel testing and test unit excavations.
Four shovel tests were excavated during the Phase II work to confirm the western boundary of the site. The Phase I survey was limited to the area within 61 m of the shore, and it was not certain that this encompassed the western site boundary. The shovel test pits were excavated further to the west in an east-west transect at 7.5 m intervals. The 4 STPs verified that the site boundaries did not, in fact, extend further in that direction. In addition, six supplemental STPs were excavated around formal test units to inspect the extent of potential features or soil anomalies. Each shovel test pit measured approximately 46 cm (1.5 ft) in diameter. STPs were excavated 15 cm into sterile subsoil. All soil from the STPs was screened through hardware mesh for systematic recovery of artifacts. Obviously recent objects found in the STPs were noted and discarded. STP data was recorded on a standardized form that includes soil descriptions and a sketch of the stratigraphic profile, and STP locations were recorded on a site plan. Digital photography was used to document overall conditions at the site.
Test units measured 1.5 X 1.5 meters in extent. The first three test units were placed off-grid on an area of elevated topography, which was thought to be a likely location for a dwelling. All of the other units (along with the shovel tests) were placed on a site grid that approximated the Phase I survey grid. A total of 12 such test units were excavated during the 2008 testing. They were excavated according to natural stratigraphy. Subplowzone strata thicker than 9 cm were subdivided into arbitrary 9 cm levels. The depth to which each unit was dug depended on the field findings as the Phase I work had suggested that stratigraphy across the site was quite variable. In excavating the test units, the general goal was to recover all or almost all cultural artifacts without excavating deeply into sterile levels. In some locations there was a very distinct, well-developed argillic horizon that clearly marked the bottom of cultural levels. In other locations this obvious ancient soil was not noted, so excavation continued until a sterile level had been dug. All features noted in the units were excavated with the exception of an apparent grave shaft, which was only tested. All soil from the test units was screened through hardware mesh and information on each excavated stratum or feature was recorded on a field form. All cultural materials were retained, with the exception of brick and shell which were both counted and discarded with a few larger pieces retained as a sample.
In general, the prehistoric component of the Anketill’s Neck Site was found to consist of a thin scatter of debitage. With one exception, the number of prehistoric artifacts varied from 0 to 11 artifacts per test unit. A few piece of fire-cracked rock and a single projectile point (a Savannah River variant) were found in one of the more centrally located test units. The projectile point, together with a fragment of steatite, suggest occupation during Terminal Archaic times.
One unit (in the south-central portion of the site) produced a much more substantial prehistoric assemblage. Stratigraphy in this unit revealed the presence of a buried ravine. This unit produced 1 Piscataway point, 1 Calvert point, 1 other biface, 13 ceramic sherds (2 Rappahannock, 7 Popes Creek including 1 rim), 85 pieces of debitage, and 30 pieces of fire-cracked rock. Two of the potsherds were quite large, one Late Woodland (Rappahannock incised) and one Middle Woodland (Popes Creek). The presence of pottery can be explained partly by the lack of disturbance to these deposits, which were deeply buried under soil that washed into the ravine in historic times and then fill deposited when a weapons storage area was built as part of the naval installation. Prehistoric pottery does not always survive well in near-surface contexts. However, the same cannot be said for the stone artifacts, so the great difference in artifact density between this unit and the others must be the result of prehistoric events, not recent disturbance. Perhaps there was a spring running in the ravine hear and near it, a perfect camping spot no more than 7.5 meters across. The artifacts recovered from this area could all date to the Middle and Late Woodland periods, and the Piscataway point could date to the Terminal Archaic or Early Woodland times.
The full Phase II prehistoric assemblage consisted of 3 projectile points (1 Savannah River, 1 Piscataway, 1 Calvert), 1 late-stage biface, 1 core, 126 flakes, 1 steatite fragment, 44 pieces of fire-cracked rock, and 13 prehistoric ceramic sherds (2 Rappahannock and 7 Popes Creek).
The historic artifacts recovered from Anketill’s Neck are what one would expect at a small plantation from the second half of the 17th century. Only a few later artifacts were present, mostly nails and some bottle glass associated with a 20th century shed in the southern part of the site. However, it must be noted that the quantity of material recovered from the site was very small compared to other sites of the period occupied by similar less wealthy, less prominent planters. The reason(s) for this disparity are not immediately apparent. Perhaps the Anketills simply did not acquire as many goods as some of their neighbors. Francis Anketill’s probate inventory is not notably rich in household goods and lists only 3 ceramic vessels. Probate inventories are not reliable guides to the presence of inexpensive items like earthenware jars and pans, but Anketill’s inventory is fairly detailed, and perhaps in this matter it is correct. In any event, the low artifact density at the Anketill’s Neck Site makes the site unusual, and it suggests that life there was more like the life of the many poor households that made up most of Maryland’s 17th century population.
No post holes or other structural features relating to the historic occupation were identified at the site. However, it should be noted that only a very small portion of the site was excavated. Given the site’s date and horizontal integrity such features are almost certainly present. Horizontal integrity was revealed by the spatial differentiation of various artifacts types. For example, the presence of the vast majority of brick and nail pieces in the center portion of the site suggested that the Anketill dwelling was likely situated in the very center of the site. As mentioned previously, a filled in ravine was documented at the site. The ravine appears to have been filled in the 20th century, but may have collected refuse as well during the 17th century occupation of the site. The 20th century filling of the ravine would have buried any extant historic deposits along with the aforementioned prehistoric deposits intact. Additional work in this area could be particularly revealing. One unit also revealed an anomaly that may relate to a historic burial. This possible grave feature suggests that a small family cemetery might be present at 18ST707.
The full Phase II historic assemblage consisted of 1 piece of window glass, 111 nails (90 handwrought, 5 machine cut, 16 wire), 16 coarse redware sherds, 1 North Devon gravel-tempered sherds, 10 North Devon gravel-tempered sherds, 9 Delftware sherds, 6 Rhenish stoneware sherds, 1 buff-bodied slipware sherd, 14 olive wine bottle glass fragments, 2 amber wine bottle glass fragments, and 4 unidentified bottle glass fragments, 2 cow bones, 12 other animal bones, 16 white clay pipe stems, 3 white clay pipe bowl fragments, 6 unidentified iron fragments, and a piece of rubber. In addition, brick and oyster shell were recovered but are not enumerated in the full site report (or consequently in the tables above).
The Anketill’s Neck Site (18ST707) encompasses the remains of a small plantation dating from the third quarter of the 17th century. Based on archival evidence, the site probably represents the plantation of Francis Anketill, who came to Maryland as an indentured servant in1641, eventually acquired property at Anketill’s Neck, and likely occupied the plantation from the early 1650s until his death in 1675. The site does not appear to have been occupied or reused after its abandonment in the late 17th century. Although portions of the site have been minimally disturbed by filling and earth moving actions, the site as a whole retains good subsurface integrity. The site has the demonstrated potential to yield important information regarding Maryland’s ordinary planters during the mid – late 17th century. The Navy should protect the site from ground disturbing activities, erosion, and relic hunting. The site also includes a prehistoric component, comprising a broad and thin scatter of mixed prehistoric artifacts dating from the Early Archaic to Late Woodland periods. Testing did not reveal any artifact patterning or identify prehistoric features within the site area. However, testing within the filled-in ravine uncovered a concentration (possibly stratified) of prehistoric artifacts dating from the Woodland periods. The prehistoric deposits in and around the ravine should also be protected and warrant further consideration if slated for disturbance in the future.
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