Posted on 06/21/2007 3:44:35 AM PDT by Pharmboy
See this article for details.
From the other article:
Philadelphia - At the controls of a hydraulic excavator, Mayor John Street hoisted the first mound of dirt from an archeological site on Independence Mall yesterday.
The dig was in commemoration of the slaves held by former president George Washington and John Adams centuries ago. It will supplement the site of the President's House, where an architectural design was announced last month of a proposed monument that will be built adjacent to the Liberty Bell Center.
The dig is designed to determine if there are any artifacts in the ground that might tell more about the people who lived and worked in the President's House, especially the slaves.
"We have a long history of archaeology in this park and it's been feral ground for generations of archaeologists," said Dennis Reidenbach, superintendent of Independence National Historic Park said. "Archeology started her in the 1950s and continued ever since. We are now sifting the soil for clues of the past."
A three- to six-week painstaking process of identifying and removing archaeological features started yesterday. An oversight committee will be responsible for tracking the dig and the construction of the President's House. Members from the African American Museum, Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, the Philadelphia Multicultural Affairs Congress, the Independence Hall Association, the Pennsylvania Historical Association and others make up the oversight committee.
"We're here because we're digging for the truth," said Street, addressing young people from several local high schools. "We spent $1.5 million on this project. At the end of the day we wanted something to make a statement, to recognize that there were slaves here.
No question about that (although my Yankee edumacashun made slavery into JUST a southern problem). When I tell my fellow Yankees that slavery wasn’t outlawed in NY until 1827, their mouths hang open.
"At Shelter Island on New York's Long Island, archaeologists have spent several years peeling open the grounds of present-day Sylvester Manor to reveal the traces of an 8,000-acre plantation that provisioned two sugar plantations in Barbados and made heavy use of African slave labor. During the late 1600s, at least 20 slaves there served as carpenters, blacksmiths, domestics and field hands.Some of the new evidence of Northern slaveholding plantations comes from excavations on the well-manicured grounds of historic estate homes, like the elegant Van Cortlandt Manor on the banks of New York's Croton River, where slaves worked in the fields and orchards.
Other discoveries are turning up in more humble, more endangered locations. In Morris County, N.J., plans for a park-and-ride transit station for New York commuters recently prompted the state to order archaeological investigations of the site, thought to have been home to the 18th century Beverwyck estate."
During excavations of the new [Liberty Bell] center, archaeologists recovered thousands of artifacts from the red brick mansion where Washington stayed in Philadelphia. But it took public protests for the National Park Service to decide that the story of Washington's slaves deserved space in the pavilion, too.
"Most Philadelphians would be shocked to know that Washington had slaves with him in the city," said University of California, Los Angeles, history professor Gary Nash, who helped spur the Park Service decision.
Well, I’m tw0 for four on those locations: I used to rent a house on Sheter Island in the summers during the ‘80s and ‘90s and know that excavation. And, I live and work in Morris County NJ, and I am currently sitting near Beverwyck road.
I assume it was well preserved, protected by 1/2” of grafitti paint? This is Philly....
No kiddin! Start digging - you might find something :)
Ddin’t we have a thread about this some months ago?
Perhaps I’m recalling poorly, but I read some years ago in the Friends of Monmouth Battlefied newsletter (”Battle Cry”) about slavery in NJ. This is because they often present local history as well, if it is close to the battle site. In this case, they were talking about 1 of the towns (defunct?) being basically a black town. In there was discussion how angry whites were that slavery was to be abolished in the 1830s (not the ‘20s, the ‘30s).
Thanks for the info, though...interesting Dig!
Yes...that was regarding the slave quarters that were unearthed. The dig is now winding down, and this was a major discovery.
THanks for the update! I’ll have to take our sons into town to take a look. We haven’t been to the Constitution Center yet either. Good time for a visit.
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