Phase II and Phase III Archaeological Database and Inventory
18ST865 Locus 6-1
Diagnostic Artifact Data
Features
Summary
Site 18ST865, also known as Locus 6-1 or 4895-3, is a 19th to 20th century domestic site located at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, in Lexington Park, Maryland. The site is east of marshland and west of the West Patuxent Basin. The site area is partially wooded and partially covered in shrub and undergrowth. A Navy structure, Building 946 (Quarters C), once stood on the north side of the site, but was demolished at an unknown point. Soils on site are Keyport silt loam and has been plowed.
Site 18ST865 lies on a tract of land originally patented by Luke Gardiner in 1652. Called Gardiner’s Creek, the property consisted of 200 acres along the Patuxent River. Luke Gardiner arrived in Maryland in 1637 with his father, Richard, and his family. By 1640 Richard Gardiner had established himself on a 1,000-acre tract called St. Richard’s Manor, located west and adjacent to Gardiner’s Creek. It was there that Luke Gardiner and the rest of his family resided until 1642. By 1645 the Puritan rebellion had reached Maryland, and as the Gardiners were a Catholic family, their plantation was seized. Rather than return to England and face further persecution, the Gardiner family took refuge in Virginia. In 1647 Luke Gardiner returned to Maryland and attempted to reclaim his father’s confiscated manor. Richard Gardiner died in 1649. In 1651 Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, re-granted St. Richard’s Manor to Luke Gardiner.
In an effort to increase his already substantial holdings in St. Mary’s County, Luke Gardiner patented several other tracts in the area, including Gardiner’s Creek in 1652. He made his home on a plantation he owned on St. Clement Bay. Both St. Richards Manor and Gardiner’s Creek were likely leased out to tenants.
In 1671 Gardiner’s Creek was sold to Francis Hopewell, who re-patented the property as Hopewell’s Delight. From 1671 until 1841, very little is known about the property. A fire at the St. Mary’s Courthouse destroyed the majority of the county records before 1827, hampering attempts to construct a more comprehensive history of the property during that time period. The chain-of-title picks up again in 1841, when John and Catherine Holton sold the now 350- acre property to Hellen and Rebecca Neale. The deed mentions that the Holtons purchased the property from John Leigh. That deed no longer exists, suggesting that John and Catherine Holton owned the property as early as 1827. According to census documents from 1820 to 1840, John Holton appears to have been a planter. In addition to his family, at least seven enslaved men and women lived on the farm. By 1840, a year before he sold the property to the Neales, Holton is listed as owning only three individuals: one man and two women.
A map of the area from 1824 (Abert and Kearney 1857) shows no structures in the near vicinity of Site 18ST865. A roadway ran north-south along the same alignment as the modern Tate Road. A house was indicated north of the site along the Patuxent River waterfront. The mapped house was likely the main house of the Holton property; any slave quarters and outbuildings were apparently not mapped by Abert and Kearney.
The Gardiner’s Creek (or Gardiner’s Neck) property remained in the Neale family for 19 years. In 1860 the property was the subject of an equity battle between Henry Carroll and his wife and Hellen and Robert Neale. The courts appointed George Morgan as trustee to sell the parcel. On March 19, 1860, Morgan sold the 350-acre parcel to Elizabeth A. Carroll. Three months later Carroll sold the property to Sarah G. LeGrand. By that time the property was known as Patuxent View.
Ten years before acquiring the property, Sarah LeGrand was listed in the 1850 census as a widow and planter with real estate valued at approximately $10,000. Her acquisition of Patuxent View (Gardiner’s Creek/Neck) in 1860 added to her already substantial holdings in St. Mary’s County. By 1871 Sarah LeGrand had died, and in December of that year two of Sarah’s daughters, Juliet and Adaline, sold the property to Charles Seebold of Union County, Pennsylvania.
A map was made of the area in 1880, and the map shows no structures in the near vicinity of Site 18ST865. The manor house had apparently been demolished; it had previously stood north of the site near the Patuxent River shoreline. Two structures stood approximately 150 meters (492 feet) south and southwest of Site 18ST865; these structures may have been slave quarters or agricultural outbuildings. An unknown structure is shown approximately 390 meters (1,280 feet) east of the site near the inlet to Gardiner’s Creek. It is possible that this structure was a fish-house.
The owner of Patuxent View, Charles Seebold, remained in Pennsylvania, likely leasing the property to tenants during his 19 years of ownership. Following his death in 1890, the property was given to his granddaughter, Emma Vogeler. By 1901 Emma had married, and in March of that year, Emma Register sold the 350-acre property to Sarah A. Hodgdon.
The Hodgdon family owned the property until the parcel was acquired by the United States government in April 1942. Property acquisition records indicate that the parcel had a number of agricultural fields that were in active use and that the main house was used a summer home. The property acquisition records list the main house as old and in disrepair, although data suggest that it was built by the Hodgdons ca. 1901. The main house was demolished by the Navy shortly after acquisition; it was identified archaeologically as Site 18ST712, located approximately 60 meters (197 feet) northeast of Site 18ST865.
The acquisition records list an additional 17 structures and two wells on the parcel. Two of the secondary structures were described as old frame tenant structures, very minimally constructed. A surviving photograph of one of the frame tenant structures indicates that it had once served as a slave cabin; the cabin is documented at the Maryland Historical Trust as MIHP No. SM-361. The frame tenant structures were also demolished by the Navy shortly after acquisition in April 1942.
Only one of the secondary structures on the Hodgdon tract still stood after World War II, a tenant house built in 1937. The house was a seven-room bungalow with wood siding, which the Navy designated “Quarters C.” It was used as the Chief Petty Officers Club until it was razed in the 1960s. Quarters C stood immediately north of Site 18ST865.
Site 18ST865 was identified in March 2012 during a Phase I survey by LBG. The Phase I survey consisted of shovel testing on a 15-meter grid, with closer interval radial tests within the site area. The Phase I survey recovered a mix of domestic and architectural items dating the last half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The artifacts included whiteware, redware, stoneware, a pipe bowl fragment, a porcelain button, wire nails, and cut nails. The artifacts were recovered principally from a plowzone. in two shovel tests, however, an anomalous soil deposit was encountered below the plowzone and was thought to be a possible earthen cellar. The artifacts and the possible feature were found in a restricted area, about 1/8-acre in size, on a slightly-sloping hillside.
In September, 2012, LBG conducted a Phase II investigation of the site. Shovel tests were excavated on transects across the site with a 10-foot interval along transects. Some shovel tests were placed judgmentally within the site. A total of 29 shovel tests were excavated.
Four test units, each measuring 3-by-3 feet, were subsequently excavated in the core portion of the site. All shovel tests and test units were excavated into subsoil and all excavated soils were sifted through 1/4-inch mesh for the recovery of artifacts. The Phase II investigation was able to determine that the soil anomaly found in the Phase I was a fill deposit rather than the remains of a cellar. No archaeological features were found in the Phase II investigation, and artifacts were restricted to the plowzone and fill sediments.
The fill deposit was encountered in three shovel tests (SIP B3, 133d, and B3dc) during the Phase I survey, and was described as light olive brown loam sediment approximately 0.5-foot in thickness, immediately below the plowzone (0.8-ft thick) and above subsoil. Shell and domestic artifacts were recovered from the fill deposit. During the Phase II investigation the fill deposit was encountered in 8 shovel tests (AlAS, 13134, and BBS), and in Test Units 1 and 2. The fill deposit was found to be of varying thickness, at some places nearly 1.5-feet thick. The fill deposit terminated abruptly on top of subsoil in every exposure, and there was no evidence of a cellar surface or of in situ artifacts at the base of the matrix. Based on the investigation, LBG has concluded that the central and southern/southwestern portion of the site area was eroded or stripped and then filled. The fill was likely deposited in the early twentieth century. The Phase II testing recovered approximately 1,750 artifacts, with nearly half of the assemblage (47%) consisting of bottle glass and plate glass. Nails are also a significant part of the site assemblage (34%), and include a mixture of cut nails and wire nails. The ceramic assemblage includes a variety of whiteware (plain, hand-painted, and transfer-print), with low frequencies of redware and stoneware. The overall assemblage is consistent with a late nineteenth and early twentieth century domestic assemblage. The assemblage from the sub-plowzone fill deposit is quite similar to the overall site assemblage, containing high quantities of glass and nails. Oyster shell is present in the fill deposit, with whole shells included in the soil matrix. Diagnostic artifacts from the fill deposit are limited to whiteware. Additional artifact analysis is ongoing, and we presently do not have a TPQ for the fill deposit. As mentioned above, the artifact assemblage from the fill suggests deposition in the early twentieth century. Archival information indicates that Site 185T865 was located on a large farm tract known in the 1940s as the Hodgdon property. The main house stood north of Site 185T865 and was a rambling 2Y2-story frame structure with a tower and Italianate architectural elements (Pogue and Ridout 1983). It was identified archaeologically as Site 18ST712. The main house was built at an unknown point after 1905 (Pogue and Ridout 1983; USGS 1905). When the Hodgdon property was acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1942, the property included a tenant quarter (apparently a former slave cabin), and two larger tenancies in addition to an array of agricultural outbuildings (United States Department of the Navy 1942). One of the tenancies was a Cape Cod-style bungalow that was built in 1937. While other buildings were demolished, this structure was kept by the Navy and designated Quarters C, or Building 946. Navy assessment records refer to building as the "Purcell House." Building 946 stood immediately north of Site 18ST865 and was demolished circa 2000 (MIHP No. SM 417-S946). A map of the area in 1905 (USGS 1905) shows a building in the same location as Building 946, so most likely the 1937 construction of Building 946 involved demolition of an earlier residential structure. The deposits at Site 185T865 are thought to relate to the pre-1937 occupation, and perhaps to the demolition event that took place circa 1937. Research is ongoing to try and ascertain the owners and tenants at the property in the period from Ca. 1880 to 1941. It is known that there were no buildings in the site area in 1880 (USCGS. 1880). In conclusion, Site 185T865 does not have the requisite research potential or integrity to meet the criteria for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Domestic sites from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are quite common in the region and this site is neither an excellent example nor does it offer a unique insight into the resource type. This site has artifacts in mixed and redeposited soils, and contains no archaeological features. Taken on the whole, the information potential of the site is very minimal. LBG recommends that the site is determined not eligible for listing on the NRHP.
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