In bits and pieces, 18th century everyday life emerged today from the sandy brown soil at the edge of The Green, coaxed from the ground by workers helping to recover the capital’s history.
A bit of flint once used on a musket or other firearm. Pieces of clay pipe bowl and stem. A copper-inlaid part to a curtain rod or fixture. Hand-worked wood. A carved handle to a tool. Oyster shells. A metal button.
All castoffs found by professional and volunteer archaeology enthusiasts under the backyard of the John Bell House, next to the Kent County Courthouse. The modest, Colonial-era building is now undergoing a feverish reconstruction for service as a new center of First State Heritage Park displays, interpretations and events.
Dating to the mid-1700s, the John Bell House was for years a down-on-its heels, sagging, overlooked cousin to the greater icons of The Green, including the Old State House. Delaware purchased the site -- long in use as a home or office -- for historic preservation in 2005.
“A lot of the other buildings around The Green are pretty high style. This gives us an opportunity to show what the rest of Dover was like,” said Elaine Brenchley, Division of Parks and Recreation manager for First State Heritage Park.
Supported by volunteers and backed by a $150,000 state appropriation, demolition workers initially pulled away later additions to the original building, exposing the ground excavated this morning.
Early this year, much of the remaining wood frame was dismantled and carted off for study and repair, leaving the roof floating eerily above the ground, supported by braces.
Division of Parks and Recreation preservation specialist Eric Dawson said about 40 percent of the original building parts will be retained, with repairs and restoration carefully crafted to match the period. Fresh, hand-cut oak shingles already neatly cover the restored roof.
“We had to go to upstate New York to find a craftsman for the siding,” Dawson said. Crafting requirements called for siding pieces to be cut and fashioned by hand precisely enough to puzzle together over uneven and fragile wall studs.
Near the building today, men and women quietly picked, shoveled and sifted dirt from 5-foot-square grids, sometimes calling out in surprise as a bit of clay pipe or other artifacts emerged.
“I think my favorite was the flint,” said Cherie Clark, archaeologist for the Division of Parks and Recreation. “It would have been English flint. At the time, that would have been something valuable.”
During earlier work, researchers found the number 1743 carved into an upper beam, along with the initials “IE” or “JE.” The carving could support researcher beliefs that the Bell House is older than the 1790s date used at the time of the state’s purchase, and it was standing when American militia assembled and drilled on The Green during the Revolutionary War.
“We’re definitely pushing it back earlier. The question is: How early?,” Brenchley said. “We definitely think it’s mid-18th century. It’s the only 18th century wood structure left in Dover.”
The Bell family, Brenchley said, might have kept the building at first as a workshop to their nearby tavern, formerly on the site of the Kent County courthouse.
“They were tavern keepers, not very far from Battel’s Tavern,” the site on The Green where signers of the Constitution gathered, Brenchley said. “They would have been competitors. Both would have hosted sessions of the General Assembly before the State House was built.”
Plans call for clear glass panels in one corner of the restored building that will allow visitors a glimpse of original timbers from the mid-1700s, as well as true-to-the-era craftsmanship used for modern repairs to some wooden features.
Special walkways will be needed to make the building wheelchair accessible. Saturday’s excavations were organized to look deep beneath the future walkways, before concrete puts artifacts out of reach.
By November, Brenchley said, the Bell House could serve as a hub for the First State Heritage Park’s first 18th Century Market and fall festival, an event that parks officials hope to hold annually.
Author: Jeff Montgomery | Source: Delaware Online [October 02, 2010]