The narrative and existing documentation has yet to adequately address the full history of the site, and archaeology promises to tell us about both the freedman and enslaved workers who lived and worked here. This work is the first foray into telling a broader, more inclusive story about the Whitehall Plantation.
April is Maryland Archaeology Month! In celebration, here are some upcoming events hosted by the Lost Towns Project and/or Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section. Learn more and find events throughout the state at marylandarcheologymonth.org. This page will be updated throughout April.
Come learn about fossils and artifacts from the experts! Make a fossil print, dig for “bones” and see real artifacts found in Maryland. Children under age 8 must be accompanied by an adult.
April 7th – Virtual Talk: The Archaeology of the Patuxent River
Virtual 6:00 pm
Join us for Archaeology Month with this free virtual presentation! Take a virtual journey along the Patuxent River with archaeologists from Howard, Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. Learn about the various archaeological resources found throughout this watershed.
This is a FREE Virtual presentation for all ages. Please email [email protected] for the zoom link.
April 12th – Edgewater: Volunteer Orientation and Fieldwork Preview
Anne Arundel County Archaeology Lab 839 Londontown Road Edgewater, MD 6:00-7:00 pm
Are you a new or returning archaeology volunteer, or considering volunteering with us?
Join us for a preview of spring and summer field and lab opportunities, and learn or refresh the basics of fieldwork! This is a great time to meet other volunteers and prepare for the summer season.
April 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, & 29 Annapolis: Whitehall Public Dig Days
Whitehall 1915 Whitehall Rd Annapolis, MD 8:00 am – 3:00 pm each day.
Join us for excavations at historic Whitehall, a former plantation outside of Annapolis. We will be excavating an area that could yield new information about those who worked and lived on the plantation in the late 18th and 19th century and whose stories have yet to be told.
Volunteers must register here in advance and should be able to commit to an entire day (8:00-3:00). Volunteers new to fieldwork are strongly encouraged to attend the Volunteer Orientation on April 12th at 6:00 pm (see above) For more information, email Drew Webster at [email protected]
April 30 – Crownsville: Walk for the Woods
Bacon Ridge Natural Area Farm Rd Entrance Crownsville, MD 7:00 am – 3:00 pm
We will be leading an archaeology hike and showcasing our travelling archaeology exhibit at Scenic Rivers Land Trust’s “Walk for the Woods.” Walk for the Woods is a day of guided hikes, including bird watching, amphibian searches, history/archaeology, naturalist hikes, and educational programs. Attendees are also invited to explore the permanently protected Bacon Ridge Natural Area’s 1000+ acres of woodlands, wetlands, streams, and meadows on their own. It is always a beautiful, relaxing day in our local woods!
Experts in wildlife, native plants, birds, and more will be on-site and available to attendees. Plus, self-guided hike options will be offered, complete with trail maps and educational signage posted along the trails.
The event is scheduled for Saturday, April 30, 2022, at Bacon Ridge Natural Area in Crownsville (rain date is May 1). Access to the event will be via the Farm Road entry. Registration for guided hikes will open approximately three weeks before the event date. The hike schedule and registration link will be announced via email and social media and will be accessible via this page. This is FREE community and family event, but registration is required for guided hikes and spaces will be limited.
For a full listing of upcoming events, check out our event calendar:
The Lost Towns is grateful to have been selected as a recipient of an FY 2022 Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grant Awards from the Maryland Historical Trust. Titled “Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom: Recording Anne Arundel County’s Past,” the goal of this project is to create a more inclusive history by researching, documenting, and sharing the diversity of Black households in nineteenth-century Anne Arundel County, including sites inhabited by both enslaved and free African-Americans, before and after emancipation.
This project will undertake a detailed archival and literature review of nineteenth-century Black housing in the Chesapeake. The investigators will create a database of approximately 100 such sites, conduct field visits to approximately 20 sites to assess their condition, create or update Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties site data, and write a summary report to disseminate the findings. Through this study, the project aims to broaden public support for the protection and preservation of Black historical spaces.
This is a multidisciplinary project that may employ documentation techniques such as remote sensing. In this photo, Lost Towns uses ground penetrating radar to investigate the slave cemetery at Whitehall.
Archaeologists with Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Section have uncovered a previously unknown 17th-century archaeological site in Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in southwest Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The discovery was announced at a public event at Jug Bay on May 14th by C. Jane Cox, Chief of Cultural Resources for Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel County, in collaboration with the nonprofit organization the Lost Towns Project, has been exploring archaeological sites within and around the County-owned Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary since the early 2000s. Along the Jug Bay segment of the Patuxent River there are nearly 80 unique archaeological sites recorded. The sites range in type and time period, representing a unique continuity of human habitation from the earliest sites, dating to 13,000 years old, through the European arrival of ca. 1650, and on to the present day. Work is largely supported by competitive research grants, and the labor-intensive work of archaeology is supplemented by the incredible contributions of volunteers. Our citizen science based model has, over the past 30 years, resulted in intensive excavations of nearly 200 sites across the County.
Map of Anne Arundel County with locations mentioned in the text
In early 2019, the archaeology crew discovered a new site, now named Pindell Bluff (18AN1672), as part of a state grant-funded project to survey and document archaeological sites around Jug Bay and to assess how natural processes like sea level rise and climate change might be affecting the archaeological record. Excavations in the summer of 2019, as part of a field school with Washington College led by Dr. Julie Markin, produced a rich variety of native-period artifacts, including a rare Clovis Point dating to up to 13,000 years ago. Between the prehistoric ceramics, projectile points, and occasional burnt animal bones the team would occasionally find a tiny fragment of historic-period pottery or deteriorated iron nails. However, the intensity of the prehistoric material overshadowed those small hints that people were also in this same space during the historic period.
In 2020, and with volunteer assistance, the crew conducted a systematic metal detector survey on the perimeter of the site and uncovered the blade of a broad hoe dating to ca. 1680-1700. Unfortunately, after this discovery, the pandemic hit and all work was put on hold. The crew was able to return in April 2021 to finish the last few excavation units and conduct one final shovel test pit survey before closing the site for the season. On the final day of the project, the crew, led by Shawn Sharpe and Drew Webster, alongside volunteers Barry Gay, Kevin McCurley, and Dani Tafolla, encountered several shovel test pits with high concentrations of colonial-era artifacts. The survey definitively showed that there had been a domestic occupation of this same bluff sometime between 1670-1730. Diagnostic artifacts included English and German ceramics dating to the late 17th and early 18th centuries as well as clay tobacco pipes from the same period.
Broad hoe blade, ca. 1680-1700
This discovery marks the earliest confirmed colonial-period site at Jug Bay, and is among the earliest historic sites in Anne Arundel County! Of the more than 1,700 recorded archaeological sites in the county, only 23 are historic sites that predate 1700. Most of those are located along the Chesapeake Bay shoreline. This site has the potential to tell us about a much less understood period of history; the first generation of people who settled Anne Arundel County along the Patuxent River.
Permanent European settlement in Anne Arundel County began in earnest in 1649, when 300 settlers–landowners, families, indentured servants, and later, enslaved Africans–arrived from St Mary’s City and Southeast Virginia to start a new settlement they called Providence along the Severn River and in the Broadneck peninsula area. Soon the European population spread across lands in the West River area and on Herring Bay. From those first 300 settlers, the population grew, and across all of the colony, historians estimate that there were about 33,000 people living in Maryland by 1680. Who might have been living at Pindell Bluff?
Tobacco pipe bowl with possible makers mark
Archival research by Pat Melville and Dave Linthicum shows that the 300-acre property was first patented by Ninial Beall and called “Bachelors Choice” in 1669. While Beall first arrived in Maryland as an indentured servant, serving a Richard Hall of Calvert County for five years, he did not arrive in quite the same fashion as most other indentured servants. The Scotsman was captured by Oliver Cromwell’s forces at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, and transported to Barbados as a prisoner. He was sent to Calvert County, MD in 1655, and placed with Richard Hall to serve out his sentence.
While Beall owned the property, records indicate that he likely never lived there. By sponsoring new settlers to Maryland colony, Beall was granted over 4,000 acres of land by the time he passed in 1717. Initial research uncovered two leases associated with the parcel of land, from 1702 and 1704,that suggest the land was owned by Jonas Jordan, a carpenter, and his wife Mary and son Thomas. It is possible that the Jordan family lived on the land in the late 17th century, until Jonas Jordan passed away. By 1702, Mary Jordan had remarried and leased all of Bachelors Choice to Seth Biggs, a tobacco planter and merchant. Court cases suggest he was living near the Western Branch of the Patuxent between 1680 and 1698, thus making him a likely suspect for our site’s resident. Biggs died without an heir in 1711. Combined with information from the artifacts, this archival research places the likely occupation of the site between 1680 and 1710.
This is just the beginning of research on the property. The cultural resources team has begun exploring research grant opportunities to fund more work, and plans to reach out to our partners at area colleges to see if there is interest in a future academic field school. The goal is for this site to become a project where interested citizens can participate through the County’s Preservation Stewardship Program, which encourages local citizens, students, and scholars to get involved in exploring local history. To learn more about Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section or get involved, visit aacounty.org/cr
