The Early Colonial Delaware Valley
An Archaeological and Historical Symposium
May 7, 2016
New Castle Court House Museum
New Castle, DE
8:45 Craig Lukezic - DHCA
Introduction
9:00 Bill Liebeknecht - Dovetail Cultural Resource Group
Wolf Pits in Colonial Delaware
9:45 Bruce A. Bendler - Adjunct Professor of History, University of Delaware
The Battle of the Boundary - A Local Skirmish: the Levels and the Penn-Calvert Dispute
For decades the Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Calverts, proprietors of Maryland, disputed the boundaries between Pennsylvania, the Three Lower Counties on the Delaware, and Maryland. This paper examines how this prolonged dispute affected local landowners and tenants in lower New Castle County, focusing on two brothers, Thomas and Jared Rothwell. During the 1730s, Maryland authorities intimidated the Rothwell brothers, who wished to purchase the land from James Steel and "improve" it. The land itself had first been granted by the Pennsylvania proprietors in 1686. The paper makes use of documents published in the Pennsylvania Archives and "The Letter Book of James Steel," in the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. These sources shed light on both the legal issues and the material culture of the times.
10:30 John P. McCarthy - Delaware State Parks
Environment, Health, and the Depositional Processes of Privies in Colonial Philadelphia
In February 1769, the Pennsylvania Assembly did an extraordinary thing; they regulated the depths of privies in the City of Philadelphia, the district of Southwark, and the built parts of the Northern Liberties. Not only that, they also legislated what could be disposed in privies. This paper details these acts of legislation and considers how they reflect contemporary understandings of public health and welfare and implications for the structure of the archaeological record in Philadelphia.
11:15 to 1:00 Lunch
1:00 Brian Crane - Versar
Late 17th-Century Demographic and Settlement Patterns Among Swedish Families in the Delaware Valley.
This presentation will focused on the 1671 census of the Delaware Valley, and Peter Stebbins Craig's genealogical research around it. My plan is to expand this by doing the same exercise with the 1693 census of the Swedish churches. The idea is to focus in on people who show up in both and look at who they have married, and where they have moved.
1:45 Daniel R. Griffith - Archaeological Society of Delaware
The Avery's Rest Site, Sussex County, Delaware
In 1674 John and Sarah Avery, along with their children, left their home in Somerset County, Maryland to settle on the north shore of Rehoboth Bay. The Avery's were English immigrants; John captained a merchant ship, operated a plantation, and served as a commissioned officer in the Delaware militia and a Justice of the Peace. Their new home, an 800-acre tract called Avery's Rest, was a mix of woods, fields, and marsh which the family transformed into a successful tobacco, grain, and livestock plantation. The Avery's daughter Jemimah and her husband inherited a portion of the plantation including her parents' home, rebuilding and expanding the operation until ca. 1715, when the house site was abandoned. The Avery family lived in a culturally diverse world in which complex relationships were formed for purposes of profit, status, and survival. These relationships were influenced by the broader political, economic, and social processes evolving in the Atlantic World of the 17th century. This was a frontier culture.
Since the fall of 2006, the Archaeological Society of Delaware, Inc. conducted archaeological fieldwork at the Avery's Rest site. Over 50 members of the society and other interested people participated in the fieldwork and laboratory analysis of this significant site. Fieldwork at the site was completed in October 2015 with the excavation of a 17th century well and surrounding areas. Excavation s in 2015, covering almost 6 months of fieldwork, revealed the final elements of a complete colonial homestead, with two structures, a well and a fenced garden. Artifacts and other analysis at the site clearly show the occupation of John and Sarah Avery (1674-1682) and the occupation of their daughter Jemima, who inherited the site in 1698. There were surprises though. It seems that the Avery's were not the first occupants of this site as there is clear evidence of occupation during the period from 1640-1665. Who were these early people? Were they Dutch or American Indians with access to European goods or English colonists occupying areas then under Dutch and/or Swedish control? Research continues.
This presentation will focus on the results of the 2015 field season and offer some broader perspective on the contribution of the research to a broader understanding of the colonial period in southern Delaware.
2:30 Marshall Joseph Becker - Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
West Chester University
The Ethnogenesis of the "Munsee" in the Upper Delaware Valley: Some Members of Tribes from the East (Esopus, Waping and Wiechquaeskeck, etc.) Enter a Buffer Zone and Become an Amalgamated Group
The upper Delaware River Valley, at and to the north of the headwaters of the Raritan River, had been a winter foraging zone for the Esopus (Sopus) tribe of northern New Jersey and nearby New York. As early as the 1630s, tribal conflicts engendered by the Five Nations Iroquois had ripple effects throughout New England and down to the mouth of the Hudson River and into the Raritan. Some of the Wiechquaeskeck from Manhattan Island and up along the western side of the Hudson shifted their summer stations into the eastern Raritan River buffer zone. Continuing Native wars drove some Waping into the same area. By 1650 numbers of Esopus and these immigrant groups, all speakers of Delawarean languages, had become active in the upper Delaware drainage, where they collectively were identified as "Munsee." Tracing early documents (treaties and land sales) enables us to examine this process of "Munsee" ethnogenesis. Archaeological documentation of this process remains elusive.
3:15: Artifact and Material Culture Discussions
David Orr: Loft Ladder.
Daniel R. Griffith: Various finds from Avery's Rest
Brian Crane: Conch Shell from Mons Jones House
John McCarthy: Objects from Fort DuPont
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