Known at last!

A long missing piece of the Franklin house rediscovery story was finally found this past week. While processing a folder in the Central Files a letter was discovered that lists the names of the four men who assisted NPS Archaeologist Paul J.F. Schumacher in locating and identifying the Franklin mansion ruins....Willie Ransom, Odell Sample, George David, and Wilson Bachus!

(Above) Photographs depicting members of the field crew that located Franklin's house ruins are glued into Schumacher's report (1956:8) entitled "Preliminary Exploration of Franklin Court Archeological Project No. 4, May-Sept. 1953.

Abstracted portion of a 1953 letter (Schumacher to Noonan, May 19, 1953) listing the names of the field crew.

Identifying these individuals has been a concern of mine since 2003, when I learned of their participation in the excavation during research conducted for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium (Jeppson 2005). The very first day of that project turned up eight black and white photographs (archaeological site record shots) glued into a preliminary site report written by Schumacher in 1956. These photographs revealed that the field crew who relocated the Franklin house ruins were African American -- something not commonly known today.

The role these men played in the excavation was explained by a contract typed on onion skin paper found in the files alongside the 1956 report. Entitled, "Estimate for Excavation of Benjamin Franklin's Court to locate and record all walls which may give us clues as to the location of Benjamin Franklin's home" (Schumacher 1953a), this document also provided the pay scale for an Archaeologist (GS-9 at $422 per month) and "6 laborers...if at union wages...$1.75 per hour" --along with a recommendation for employing workers from Local 57, the Laborer's International Union which is a construction and industry or building trades union (Schumacher 1953a:1). Schumacher's field notes (1953b), also stored in the Archives, report on the first day of excavation (in May 1953) that four laborers were hired from the union at this pay.

(Top) Schumacher's 1953 typed field notes, page 1. (Middle) The field notes for this date document that when APS funding ran out, the union workers were hired by NPS. (Bottom) Schumacher's field notes are presumably typed up from his handwritten draft after the fact, as attested to by this summary of hours on the last page of the notes.

Secondary research on the history of Franklin Court's discovery undertaken in 2005 provided some context for this labor history finding that the archaeological labor wage paid to Ransom and the others was $1 higher than the then current minimum wage (Jeppson 2007). (The National Average Wage Index for 1953 was $3140, the Median Wage Index for a family was $4100, and the minimum wage was .75 cents an hour.) Wage data for the period also reveals that Black households in the Northern states have two-times the income of those in the South (US Census Bureau Historical Income Table P-53 2004; Full time employee annual wage 1953). Union membership among Blacks in Philadelphia is presumably partly responsible for the higher Northern incomes.

But while the materials in the archaeological documents collection included photographs of, and employment details about, these men, their names remained unidentified --until now. The only hints came from a field note entry dated May 26, 1953, but the notation wasn't clear as to whether monikers or surnames were being referenced: "It poured...two men showed up (Ransom and Sample)".

So now the names of the co-rediscoverers of Franklin's mansion are known! The letter found this week in the Central Files was written May 19, 1953 and is from Schumacher to the Assistant Secretary of the American Philosophical Society (Schumacher 1956c). It summarizes the wages for the field crew -- and in doing so, identifies them by name!

INHP Archives materials referenced in this posting:
Schumacher, Paul J. F.
1953 a. Estimate for Excavation of Benjamin Franklin's Court [Archaeological Project No. 30, renumbered as "4"]. Schumacher, Acc. No. 59, Series 1: Reports, Box 10, Folders 1-3.

1953b. Archaeological Field Notes: Franklin Court Archeology - East Side-- Archeological Project No. 4. Schumacher, Acc. No. 59. Series 1: Reports, Box 10, Folders 1-3.

1953c. Letter (copy) to Julia Noonan (APS) May 19, 1953. Central Files, Box 34: Arch. Structures Franklin Court--Master Plan, 1953.

1956. Preliminary Exploration of Franklin Court Archeological Project No. 4, May-Sept. 1953. Acc. No. 117. Series 1: Reports Box 10, Folder 12.

Other References cited...
Jeppson, Patrice L.
2007. Civil Religion and Civically Engaged Archaeology: Researching Benjamin Franklin and the Pragmatic Spirit. In B. Little and P. Schackel edited, Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement. Pages 173-202. Lanham Maryland: Alta Mira Press.

2005. Historical Fact, Historical Memory: An Assessment of the Archaeology Evidence Related to Benjamin Franklin. Historical Archaeology research undertaken for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On file: INHP.

Roots That Time Has Redefined

Field Report photograph, 1953 excavation of Franklin Mansion (Schumacher 1956:8).

Before there was an Independence National Historical Park there was archaeological research undertaken for what was to become the park. The first work (depicted above in an archived report) was conducted just over fifty years ago at the site of Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia mansion by the American Philosophical Society (APS) and the National Park Service (NPS).

At that time, APS undertook the excavation both as a memorial tribute to their founder (Franklin) on the 250th anniversary of his birth and as a research endeavor not unlike the expeditions APS sponsored, a half century earlier, that fostered Americanist Archaeology in its incipient period. NPS interest in the house site served the needs of the Master Plan for a national shrine to democracy (the soon to be Independence National Historical Park) which would include a park unit dedicated to local Philadelphia history and, in particular, to Franklin.

Franklin Court as the site became known (and interpreted) in Independence Park is a seminal urban archaeology site – and, until recently, the historical archaeology understandings that emerged in its early excavations have continued to shape the trajectory of Independence Park archaeology --and hence the understandings of early American history.

One of these very early dating assumptions about the Independence Park archaeological record has now been overturned. It involves the preservation of the archaeological evidence below ground in those areas with susequent building construction. The Independence Park Archive Archeological Records Collection reveals how this - an early understanding about the area's archaeological resource base --emerges and then transitions into a set principle determining the development and maintenance of archaeology in the park over time.

This past month I have been processing early archaeology-related administrative files in the Park Archives. In this collection I have come across what is likely the first time a recommendation is made regarding the state of the archaeological evidence buried below the city streets. It is a recommendation in a report detailing the results of the first episode of work at Franklin Court. It is written by Paul Schumacher, the archaeologist in charge of the 1953 and 1955 excavations at the site of Franklin’s mansion:

“It may well be that any future archeology of Old Philadelphia would give the best results by merely excavating underneath sidewalks and smaller streets or alleys. The properties where modern structures have been razed are very poor for archeology because of the deep basements these buildings usually had….”

I was already familiar with this report from earlier research on

Franklin-related archaeology that I conducted for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium (work commissioned as part of the federal celebrations to honor Franklin on the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2006). But coming across Schumacher’s report again in the Central Files –where they are evidence of park administrative history related to archaeology --made me see the report’s recommendations with a slightly different set of eyes.

I undoubtedly also saw this documentation differently today because of the recent understandings about urban historical archaeology gleaned from the excavation of the President’s House site in 2007. That recent park research revealed that the basements of nineteenth century buildings do not necessarily entirely obliterate the evidence of the colonial period landscape. This surprise finding in the case of the President’s House site has led to a rethinking about Independence Park's archaeological resources --namely, that the archaeological evidence can survive the ravages of time more than archaeologists thought it could.

But why was this survivability ever in doubt? The documents in the Central Files reveal that this (now often erroneous) assumption appears in the earliest days of the park’s creation when, in 1956, archaeologist Schumacher reports up the administrative chain-of-command with recommendations for future excavation in Old Philadelphia. Schumacher posits a logical conclusion at the time given the circumstances (the earliest excavation) but his recommendation reflected only limited exposure to the archaeological record in-situ (as it appears in the ground).

Schumacher was excavating an unusual example for colonial Philadelphia archaeology. The Franklin house was located in the middle of a city block. Deep basements are usually on the outside edges of the block along the streets but, in this case, a small street bisecting the block was built over top of the (razed) Franklin house remains. Nearly all of the foundation walls for Franklin’s house remained unimpacted by the street construction and by the two rows of homes that lined this street. Schumacher did explore parts of the adjacent house lots and one can only surmise that he is hypothesizing what might remain under the 19th century structures as he and the excavation team were not tasked with finding anything other than the Franklin ruins and were involved in following out the foundation walls that were encountered (leaving other areas largely unexcavated). The most relevant sought after discoveries at the time happened to be found under the street and sidewalks where their survival rate was very high.

In a future post I will report on other documents in the archive that show how this early recommendation transforms into a baseline assumption that holds for 50 years of Park development and management --until 2007 and the President’s House findings.

One note: It was likewise long assumed that archaeological evidence of the Native American experience was obliterated by the development of the city. In past decades, when archaeological artifacts were encountered during excavations they were considered to be 'out of context' (removed from their original place and time of deposit/use by subsequent city buildings). It is now understood, in part from the National Constitution Center excavations in Independence Park, that evidence related to the Native American past can be found in intact archaeological deposits in the city. For more on this change in thinking see the brilliant, online presentation, Native American Sites in the City of Philadelphia: Elusive but not gone. This web offering was created by archaeologist Doug Mooney and it is archived at the web site of the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum.


INHP Archive materials used in the preparation of this posting:

Jeppson, P.L. Historical Fact, Historical Memory: An Assessment of the Archaeology Evidence Related to Benjamin Franklin: Historical Archaeology research undertaken for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2005)

Letter, Anderson to INHP Regional Director, Region One (Cox or Lisle), Feb. 20, 1953, [D18 FRCW as quoted in Grieff 1985:374]

Philadelphia National Shrines Report to the United States Congress (1947)

Schumacher, Paul. Franklin Court, Preliminary Exploration of Franklin Court Archeology Project No. 4, May-Sept. (1956)

See also:

Fowler, Don D. and David R. Wilcox. Philadelphia and the Development of Americanist Archaeology. University of Alabama Press (2003)

Philadelphia Archaeological Forum. http://www.phillyarchaeology.org/

Oral History!

Great News! Jackson Ward "Smokey" Moore Jr., has emailed with some recollections about the early use of electrolysis and ultrasonic cleaning methods at INDE...

Smokey is an archaeologist whose work at Independence Park almost four decades ago was the focus of a previous posting. His rememberances clarify and deepen our understanding of the history of archaeological practice in Independence Park, in NPS (the federal agency), in the subdiscipline of historical archaeology, and in archaeology in general.

NPS Public Affairs photo of Jackson Ward 'Smokey' Moore Jr.

in the archeology lab in the Second Bank, circa 1960.

I couldn't be more pleased about this! I had high hopes that this blogging project would operate collaboratively. We have now had instructive commentary and invaluable suggestions from a museum curator, a Pennsylvania-based archaeologist, an archivist from the city, a tour guide specialist, and various members of the interested public -- each of whom has helped to inform this INDE Archives Finding Aid project. Now we are fortunate to hear from someone who helped create the materials that comprise the INDE Archeological Records Collection. He is a wonderful writer to boot!

Smokey has given his permission for this correspondence to be treated as oral history so it too will be preserved as part of the INDE archaeological records collection. The following are excerpts from his correspondence (edited to the topic of archeological lab methods).

Jackson Ward "Smokey" Moore writing to V-I-P Patrice L. Jeppson on Aug. 7th, 2009:

The letter about my magic machine from San Francisco was probably from Paul J.F. Schumacher. He was referring to the electrolysis set up. I introduced it to INDE but it wasn't my idea. At Fort Fredericka NM Joel and I had a lab assistant named Bob Taylor. We had been cleaning iron artifacts by heating them in a pot-bellied stove, dunking them and pounding the crusts off, followed by brass and/or steel brushing. Then we would coat them oil to minimize rusting. After Joel left, I got down a copy of Plenderlieth's volume on museum object treatment. I saw a very complex arrangement of electrical equipment that Plenderlieth used for metal objects. Shaking my head I showed it to Bob. Bob was an island man, part of Cap'n Taylor's clan [deleted bio data] whose background was shrimpboating. After about 15 minutes he turned me and exclaimed "Hell, Cap'n, that ain't nothin but a gussied up batt'ry charger!". He also believed that sodium hydroxide was "plain ole lye." I got the stuff and we used a small aquarium tank to clamp the anodes to. It worked beautifully! I sent one of those [NPS] forms to credit Bob. I think Stan South was fielding those then. A downside-- I'm not sure I didn't uffer some detriment from the gas that the process gave off. [sic ;) ? ]

The Ultrasonic Cleaner was Bruce's [B.B. Powell] introduction. It was great for encrusted button and ceramics and other materials. It worked on small metallic objects too. We had to pare down our expectations for many metal objects though: the transducers sometimes broke! It's hard to recapture exact scenes so I don't remember how well we coped with continuing to use process. Maybe Bruce remembers.

NPS Archeologist Paul Schumacher, circa 1955 (top), NPS Archeologist B. Bruce Powell, circa middle 1960's (bottom).

On August 13th, Smokey added:
...My discussion of the ultrasonic device [in the last email communication excerpted above] was in terms of the circumstances that then prevailed. Our appliance was quite small; I would guess about 8"x11" at most. (Bruce may remember it differently). I haven't kept up those babies. I have seen the ones jewelers use to clean diamond rings, and my Braun 7800 electric razor's head cleaner is a mini ultrason. When I saw the illustration in your blog of the ultrasons used today, I realized that the puny tasks we required then would be pieces of cake. now.