Once asked to research some tannery remains in Huntington, NY and having
instead gone to work in NYC I have one archaeological site to report from New
Jersy, though the remains of US patriots of the American Revolution,
of "Baylor's Dragoons" were found in it.
How I came by this pamphlet "The Massacre of Baylor's Dragoons September
28, 1778 Excavation of the Burial Site" the Archaeological Report c) 1968 by
Wayne M. Daniels, the then Museum Director, Bergen County Historical
Society, and authored by Freeholder D. Bennet Mazur, and published by
Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders, is an archaeology story perhaps
fitting for a Halloween story.
First the historical background of the report:
"On the evening of September 28, 1778, approximately 120 Dragoons of the
Continental Army, under the command of Col. George Baylor, were bivouacked
in six barns and out-buildings along what was then called Overkill Road now
known as River Vale Road. These men were attacked by a vastly superior
force of British troops during the night in which some 54 of the Americans were
killed or taken prisoner. The incident became known as "Baylor's Massacre."
An unknown number of these men, reported to be between 40 and 60 were
alleged to have been buried in tanning vats in the the neighborhood, the
location of which was lost in history by the removal of the mitone which once
marked the site."
...
"According to a book on the subject of Tanning operations (footnote 2:
Tanning Operations in the United States Before 1840; Library of Congress, not
cited in the Bibliography) of the period, such vats would have had to be
constructed on the bank of a river or a stream to assure a good water supply,
since water for the tanning solution had to be lifted from the river by hand.
The tanning operation itself was usually comprized of three hogsheads sunk
into the ground, each containing a varying concentration of solution. A fourth
vat above the surface was for a liming solution to prepare the skins for tanning
by removing hair and fatty matter. A millstone was employed to grind bark for
tannic acid and oyster or clam shells for the lime."
The historical research following and the archaeology is excellant, as are the
colored drawings, maps, photographs, artifacts, human osteological research
and exploration and one conclusion:
"The attack upon Colonel Baylor's Dragoon's was not a massacre in the
conventional sense, and perhas it has been misnamed. Certainly documentary
evidence refering to as many as twenty bayonet wounds in survivors and the
evidence of the cause of death of dragoon #4 (see: Appendix) indicate that a
more carefully chosen term might be 'atrocity'."
I was assisting a small "gifted and talented" program in the Huntington Town
Cemetery, NY for the Christopher Vagts, then Suffolk County Historian and
School Board member, Rufus Langhans, the Huntington Town Historian, Edward
Johanneman, Laurie Schroeder and Gaynell Stone, of the Suffolk County
Archaeological Association, of whch I was a volunteer and participant, when
we were also assisted by Dr. Gary Corrado, a podiatrist (medicine below the
knee) who in the recent re-enactments, played Benjamin Thompson, a young
British officer in charge of British Revolutionary War Fort Golgotha, the remains
of which we relocated some parts of, it being plowed over after the
Revolution. It was probably where Nathan Hale was brought before his
imprisonment and hanging in Manhattan at still unverified location(s). Later
Benjamin Thompson would be known (perhaps also "gay") as Count Rumford
the important heat science researcher.
One of the shallow excavations, 5th and 6th graders in a cemetery, who were
also shown how to make gravestone rubbings, part of the "local history" state
curriculum requirements set up then and since in New York, was the recovery
of a large pin or brooch with the cursive "Q" and "R" overlaid from presumably
the "Queens Rangers" known to have occupied Long Island, and represented
by Dr. Corrado, whom I lent the pin for the night to make a copy for his fellow
re-enactors, who soon would restage the bloodless Sunday morning victory
over the British Army at the fort in the Manor of St. George on the Great
South Bay, near the New York signer of the Declaration of Independence,
William Floyd's Manor, which was also occupied by British forces is said, later
visited by American federalists.
The NY SHPO was submitted a report also, by Edward Johanneman, MA,
perhaps the remains of the entrance to Fort Golgotha found. A former effort
by so-called "archaeologists" from NYC had upset a few people.
Happy Halloween!
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