Summer camps at Stratford

Are you one of 70 million grandparents in the U.S. today?  The average age of first-time grandparents is only 47, old enough to appreciate the rich heritage of our country and young enough to take an active part in the education and cultural enrichment of their grandchildren. This emerging role for grandparents is increasingly significant as parents seem to be working more and have busy schedules. To that end, grandparents throughout the country have found a wonderful way to bond with the younger generation: the history-based summer residential camp programs at Stratford Hall, an 18^th century plantation, home of the Lees of Virginia.

Campers get hands-on experiences with an archaeological dig, fossil hunting on the beach and many traditional colonial activities, including, for example, hammering hot iron with the blacksmith, an 18^th school lesson, and hoeing Stratford’s tobacco crop. Trays of 18^th Century delicacies are carried down the brick walk from the outside kitchen to the Great House dining room to seehich camper can get to the Great House fastest without spilling—all while the cook is harassing them with “You better get movin’, Col. Lee is gettin’ impatient for his dinner.”

The arts have not been forgotten.  Practice on the recorder is enjoyed by all ages.  One 18^th century Virginian commented that “there seemed to be tooting coming from every house.”  The harpsichord is the classic instrument of the period, fascinating to play on and to see how it differs from today’s piano. Children may study actual descriptions of early runaway servants and draw posters picturing their interpretation of such descriptions.

Participants in Stratford’s three-day grandparent/grandchild camp relive history. After being inducted into the Virginia Militia and learning to march (are you sure you know your right foot from your left?), campers reenact the  Revolutionary War attack upon Stratford.  In April, 1781, a British landing party rowed ashore, apparently intent on burning buildings there. A small group of local Militiamen, under the leadership of Richard Henry Lee, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, defended the Stratford landing.  The single British casualty was given a solemn burial on the beach.  How can children better come to appreciate a small piece of America’s fight for independence!

At first, campers are startled and puzzled at the shout, “Fire in the henhouse!”  It seems that Henny Penny has been playing with candles again and ignited a (simulated) fire. It’s time to man the bucket brigade, a cooling activity on a warm summer day as water seems to splash everywhere.  Two lines of campers compete to see which can douse the “burning hen house” with the most water. There are, of course, usually some camper comments about fried chicken for dinner.

This 3-day camp experience is not complete without traditional fishing in the millpond, and enjoying the soft, warm sands of Stratford’s pristine beach while searching for Miocene fossils, such as shark’s teeth.  There is free time to hike the nature trails which meander throughout the nearly 2000 acres, or to just relax in the solitude of a “lazy, hazy day of summer.” 

Our campers come from all over the country and leave with last impressions:

“Better organized than any intergenerational that I have attended”
“I’ll be recommending this to many friends”
“Staff overlooked nothing…a delight to be part of this program.”
“Great program! Unique.”
“My granddaughter and I had a wonderful time,lots of bonding, fun and learning together.”
“Captivating, content-full, well paced, a gem of a setting.”

For more information about our Grandparent/Grandchild Summer Camps, please check out our website or call Bill Doerken at (804) 493-8038 (ext. 1026). You can also ask questions below!

 - Bill Doerken, Coordinator of Special Programs

The curator takes Manhattan

Greetings from New York City (above, a view of Rockefeller Center ice rink from my hotel).  I am currently on a scouting trip to New York during Americana Week - the time in late-January when all the big auction houses have their sales and the major antique shows are running.  After arriving yesterday, I spent the afternoon at the New York Ceramics Fair and today it is the Winter Antiques Show and whatever else I may be able to squeeze in.  We're not bidding on anything at any of the major auctions, so this time it's just the shows for me.

So what exactly do I do at these shows?  Well, I talk to people and I look at things.  Those are the two main activities.  Before I left Virginia, I made a binder of information related to items that I'm looking for, including pictures and information gleaned from Lee family records like inventories.  This trip the focus is on ceramics and specifically items found via archaeology (above - like the rat's nest - or below ground).  If you've been to our new slave quarter exhibits, you know that we have archaeology on display.  Two fragments of white salt-glazed stoneware are on view (above) and I'm looking to find whole examples to display in the slave quarter rooms.

Talking and scouting yesterday led to this plate:  an English white salt-glaze plate with molded rim.  Can you see where these fragments might have fit?

I'm also looking for the more rare finds.  Like the Chinese export porcelain pattern we found in the rat's nest with a pair of crabs on it.  Or the agateware tea bowl found in the West Yard and now on display in our new Southwest Outbuilding exhibits.  No luck so far.  So I give out my card, gather e-mail addresses, and will send dealers pictures of the fragments so they can help keep a lookout for examples in the marketplace.  Keep your fingers crossed for me today and I'll be sure to report back if any interesting finds come my way.

What's Cooking in the Kitchen?

Well, there may not be anything stewing on the coals (yet!), but the kitchen is getting a makeover! I'm Brenda Hornsby Heindl, summer intern and recent graduate of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, and I'm reassessing the furnishings, room use, and interpretation of the Southeast Dependency/Kitchen building.

After researching the restoration of the space in the early 1930s, I've been reading through original documents of the Lee family, period recipes, archaeological reports, and other eighteenth-century documents from the region. I've also been comparing the kitchen to other eighteenth-century sites (intact and archaeological) such as the Shirley Plantation, Menokin, Kenmore Plantation, Mount Vernon, and Montpelier. I recently returned from a research trip in Williamsburg, where I met with curators, archaeologists, and historic architects and architectural preservationists who helped me with assessing the context of an eighteenth-century kitchen. Because of Philip Ludwell Lee's surviving 1776 probate inventory, as well as the strength of other Lee family records from that decade, I'm leaning toward a kitchen setting of the third quarter of the eighteenth century.

One of the most exciting things listed on the 1776 inventory is a chocolate stone! During a recent conversation with Frank Clarke of Colonial Williamsburg, I learned that there were two types of chocolate stones. Perhaps one day Stratford Hall will have a foodways program that includes making chocolate!
 
Did you know that Stratford's kitchen likely once had a large closet space located near the hearth? After examining pre-restoration photographs, as well as a 1763 document mentioning materials stolen from the "kitchen closet," the kitchen proposal will definitely suggest looking for evidence for that closet! (Look at the ceiling and wall to the left of the hearth in this pre-restoration photograph--see the outline where the plaster is missing?)

Working with curator Gretchen Goodell, my hope is to create an interpretative space that can be visited without an interpreter, but also a useable space for cooking demonstrations. Combining original sources, objects, and archaeological and architectural material will provide for an in-depth look at the kitchen of Stratford Hall.

Archaeology Field School at Stratford Hall

For five weeks in May and June, Stratford Hall is once again hosting a Field School in Archaeology in cooperation with the University of Mary Washington's Department of Historic Preservation. Under the direction of Dr. Douglas W. Sanford, students learn to survey, excavate, document, and interpret the archaeological record of Stratford's 18th century landscapes. Students are housed on the plantation, and in addition to field work they also participate in weekly class discussions of archaeological readings and take field trips to nearby historic properties and other archaeological sites in Virginia and Maryland.
The focus of this year's dig is the Oval Site (ST92), a farming complex which dates from approximately 1740 to 1780, and is located about 800 feet south of the Great House on the western side of the Oval drive. The site was originally discovered in the 197os during a plantation-wide survey directed by Dr. Fraser Neiman. Beginning in 2001, the site has been investigated by 8 UMW field schools. At present, the site consists of what we suspect to be an overseer's house featuring a full-height brick-lined basement, a large 20' x 40' post-in-ground barn, and a third structure, also post-in-ground, that was discovered last year in the western portion of the site. This structure is believed to have been either a kitchen or slave quarter.

The 2010 Field School is continuing to investigate and uncover portions of this possible kitchen or slave quarter. We are currently in our third week, and have already found a portion of what we hope is another posthole for the building, several other features, and numerous artifacts. The artifacts include both architectural debris and domestic refuse ranging from countless brick fragments, hand-wrought iron nails, and pieces of window glass to a wide variety of ceramics including coarse utilitarian earthenwares to fine porcelain tablewares. Brass tacks, white-clay pipe stems, table glass, gun flints, brass buckles, iron bridle bits, and even a prehistoric projectile point have been found as well.
By carefully digging 5' x 5' squares of dirt, layer by layer with shovels and trowels, in the area of the suspected third building, the students and crew continue to learn more about the size of this structure, what it was used for, and what was around it. The artifacts screened from those layers of dirt tell us when the site was occupied, what kinds of materials were used in the building's construction, and what kind of activities were carried out by the occupants of the site. Learning more about this building and the enslaved African Americans and free white employees who likely worked and/or lived in this structure contributes to the understanding of Stratford's complex 18th century communities and landscapes.

The Field School is onsite Monday through Friday from 8am to 4pm and runs until June 18th. We hope you'll come and visit while we're working and learn more about this site!

Archaeology Intern

Material culture, or the artifacts recovered from archaeological excavations, act as windows into the lifeways and mentalities of those who came before us. The act of unearthing something that hasn’t been held in two hundred years is really an indescribable experience and is what I love about archaeology. I hope to bring the same passion that I feel on a dig to my archaeology internship at Stratford Hall.

The main priority of my internship project here at Stratford is to re-house the archaeological artifacts that currently reside in the basement of the Council House. They include artifacts from J. Paul Hudson’s excavations in the Mill Field from 1969 to 1975, and Fraser Neiman’s excavation of the Clifts Plantation in the Mill Field (44WM33) from June 1976 to January 1978, as well as numerous other artifacts that have been found at Stratford over the years. Working with Sarah Holland, the Collections Manager at Stratford, I’ve come up with the proper supplies needed for long-term storage of these artifacts. Thankfully, many of these items were conserved post-excavation. Therefore, despite the amount of time that has passed since their unearthing, most are still in a fairly stable condition, and will remain so with proper storage conditions.

Another goal of my internship is to catalog each and every artifact that is recovered from the Council House basement in as much detail as possible, with the expectation that the information will someday be expanded upon and entered into the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (or DAACS). This database, based in the Department of Archaeology at Monticello, is an invaluable resource for the interpretation of the slave-based society that developed in the Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Caribbean throughout the colonial period. It provides the researcher with comprehensive archaeological data from several sites within these regions that were at some point associated with slavery. Stratford Hall actually has one site, ST116, entered into DAACS, but the hope is to contribute more in an effort to further our understanding of the lifeways of enslaved peoples. For more information on ST116, an earthfast slave dwelling excavated by the Mary Washington College Field School, one can view its entry by Dr. Douglas Sanford.

Currently, I am going through the artifacts catalogued by J. Paul Hudson, which include both the artifacts he and the Archaeological Society of Virginia, Williamsburg Chapter, found in the Mill Field and those that had been recovered prior to that (about 7,000 total). Hudson, who at the time was a member of the Executive Board of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, recovered most of his finds from surface collections, though several hundred came from more intensive excavations, which revealed a root cellar (MF-1) and a refuse pit (RP-1). Though the majority of artifacts in Hudson’s inventory are from the 19th century, they also run the gamut from Native American spear points to 18th century English Buckley earthenware to a 20th-century Stratford Hall souvenir cup (complete with the Stratford squirrel!). So, while I’ve gone through less than half of the artifacts at this point, I’ve already been privy to material culture from all stages of occupation of the area that is now Stratford Hall. 

Being a ceramic fanatic, my favorite find so far has been the Josiah Spode stone china transferware plates in the Temple pattern, manufactured from 1805 to 1830 (see picture). These could have been used by the Lees, who lived at Stratford Hall until 1822. While not as expensive as Chinese porcelain—which this blue and white, chinoiserie style earthenware attempted to emulate—this was by no means an inexpensive tableware, and demonstrates that either the Lees or the Somervilles were purchasing items with a certain amount of social cachet.

Next, I’ll be moving on to the artifacts recovered from Frasier Neiman’s excavations at Mill Field. Neiman, the current Director of Archaeology at Monticello, did much more extensive excavations, which led to the discovery of the Clifts Plantation. The land was owned by the Pope family from 1656 until its sale to Thomas Lee in 1718. Built in 1670, and expanded upon throughout the next 60 years, the Clifts was occupied by tenants until 1730, when it was demolished by Thomas Lee. As I’ve been working mainly with artifacts from the late-18th and 19th centuries, I’m anxious to explore the earlier ones recovered from Neiman’s excavation of the Clifts.

So, for the remainder of my internship, I anticipate a lot more tongue testing (best way to figure out what kind of pottery you have in your hand!) and the rediscovery of some awesome artifacts.

2009 Field School Findings

The 2009 Field School students departed on June 19 after 5 weeks of excavating in the field west of the Oval. Most of the test units are now backfilled, leaving just a few open for future study. The weather this summer was fairly cooperative since the intermittent rains kept the ground soft for digging. We enjoyed having the students here and will miss seeing the daily flurry of activity as we drive around the site.

The exciting discoveries for the season were two large postholes for an earthfast building close to the present paved road. These postholes, found during the final days of the field school, have other features associated with them which were probably storage pits within the building. The students found plenty of artifacts, such as pieces of ceramics, glass wine bottle fragments, iron nails and large amounts of crumbled brick, throughout the excavation area. These artifacts basically date from the same period as the artifacts found in other parts of the Oval site. The units also yielded evidence for gardening and fences.

The spacing of the postholes will allow field school director Dr. Doug Sanford to estimate where other postholes would likely be located. We will probably find out how large the structure was (and what it was used for) when the field school returns for another season. We thank the University of Mary Washington for making the 2009 field school season possible.

Archaeological Field School at Work

The 2009 Field School in Historical Archaeology is currently exploring the field near the Oval excavations in hopes of locating additional structures associated with the farm site there. Thirteen students from the University of Mary Washington's Department of Historic Preservation are participating in a five-week summer school class to learn basic archaeological skills under the direction of Dr. Doug Sanford and two seasoned crew members. While students master excavation techniques, Stratford also reaps the rewards of their efforts--information about the landscape when the Lee family lived here.

From 2001 to 2008, previous field schools concentrated on the grassy Oval area just south of the main house, finding evidence of a complex of buildings on the site. These structures ranged from a 16 by 20-foot earthfast building with adjoining 8 by 16-foot building with brick-lined basement to a large 20 by 40-foot earthfast structure probably used as a barn. This farm complex of utilitarian structures dating from the mid-eighteenth century would have presented an aspect quite different from the present pristine view from the main house.

The excavation units opened so far have produced a wealth of artifacts--including a tremendous amount of crumbled brick. A variety of ceramics and building materials such as window glass have been found, along with prehistoric artifacts that are routinely discovered throughout the plantation. A final update on the findings of this year's field school will be posted in a few weeks.