A number of people participated in the preparation of this study. The
inspiration for the archeological and historical investigations came
from Professor Oscar H. Darter, who until 1960 was chairman of the
Department of Historical and Social Sciences at Mary Washington College,
the women's branch of the University of Virginia. The actual excavations
were made under the direction of Frank M. Setzler, formerly the head
curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. None of the
investigation would have been possible had not the owners of the
property permitted the excavations to be made, sometimes at considerable
inconvenience to themselves. I am indebted to W. Biscoe, Ralph
Whitticar, Jr., and Thomas Ashby, all of whom owned the excavated areas
at Marlborough; and T. Ben Williams, whose cornfield includes the site
of the 18th-century Stafford County courthouse, south of Potomac Creek.
For many years Dr. Darter has been a resident of Fredericksburg and, in
the summers, of Marlborough Point on the Potomac River. During these
years, he has devoted himself to the history of the Stafford County area
which lies between these two locations in northeastern Virginia.
Marlborough Point has interested Dr. Darter especially since it is the
site of one of the Virginia colonial port towns designated by Act of
Assembly in 1691. During the town's brief existence, it was the location
of the Stafford County courthouse and the place where the colonial
planter and lawyer John Mercer established his home in 1726. Tangible
evidence of colonial activities at Marlborough Point--in the form of
brickbats and potsherds still can be seen after each plowing, while John
Mercer's "Land Book," examined anew by Dr. Darter, has revealed the
original survey plats of the port town.
In this same period and as early as 1938, Dr. T. Dale Stewart (then
curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution) had
commenced excavations at the Indian village site of Patawomecke, a few
hundred yards west of the Marlborough Town site. The aboriginal
backgrounds of the area including Marlborough Point already had been
investigated. As the result of his historical research connected with
this project, Dr. Stewart has contributed fundamentally to the present
undertaking by foreseeing the excavations of Marlborough Town as a
logical step beyond his own investigation.
Motivated by this combination of interests, circumstances, and
historical clues, Dr. Darter invited the Smithsonian Institution to
participate in an archeological investigation of Marlborough.
Preliminary tests made in August 1954 were sufficiently rewarding to
justify such a project. Consequently, an application for funds was
prepared jointly and was submitted by Dr. Darter through the University
of Virginia to the American Philosophical Society. In January 1956 grant
number 159, Johnson Fund (1955), for $1500 was assigned to the program.
In addition, the Smithsonian Institution contributed the professional
services necessary for field research and directed the purchase of
microfilms and photostats, the drawing of maps and illustrations, and
the preparation and publication of this report. Dr. Darter hospitably
provided the use of his Marlborough Point cottage during the period of
excavation, and Mary Washington College administered the grant. Frank
Setzler directed the excavations during a six-week period in April and
May 1956, while interpretation of cultural material and the searches of
historical data related to it were carried out by C. Malcolm Watkins.
At the commencement of archeological work it was expected that traces of
the 17th- and early 18th-century town would be found, including,
perhaps, the foundations of the courthouse. This expectation was not
realized, although what was found from the Mercer period proved to be
of greater importance. After completion, a report was made in the 1956
_Year Book_ of the American Philosophical Society (pp. 304-308).
After the 1956 excavations, the question remained whether the principal
foundation (Structure B) might not have been that of the courthouse.
Therefore, in August 1957 a week-long effort was made to find
comparative evidence by digging the site of the succeeding 18th-century
Stafford County courthouse at the head of Potomac Creek. This disclosed
a foundation sufficiently different from Structure B to rule out any
analogy between the two.
It should be made clear that--because of the limited size of the
grant--the archeological phase of the investigation was necessarily a
limited survey. Only the more obvious features could be examined within
the means at the project's disposal. No final conclusions relative to
Structure B, for example, are warranted until the section of foundation
beneath the highway which crosses it can be excavated. Further
excavations need to be made south and southeast of Structure B and
elsewhere in search of outbuildings and evidence of 17th-century
occupancy.
Despite such limitations, this study is a detailed examination of a
segment of colonial Virginia's plantation culture. It has been prepared
with the hope that it will provide Dr. Darter with essential material
for his area studies and, also, with the wider objective of increasing
the knowledge of the material culture of colonial America. Appropriate
to the function of a museum such as the Smithsonian, this study is
concerned principally with what is concrete--objects and artifacts and
the meanings that are to be derived from them. It has relied upon the
mutually dependent techniques of archeologist and cultural historian and
will serve, it is hoped, as a guide to further investigations of this
sort by historical museums and organizations.
Among the many individuals contributing to this study, I am especially
indebted to Dr. Darter; to the members of the American Philosophical
Society who made the excavations possible; to Dr. Stewart, who reviewed
the archeological sections at each step as they were written; to Mrs.
Sigrid Hull who drew the line-and-stipple illustrations which embellish
the report; Edward G. Schumacher of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
who made the archeological maps and drawings; Jack Scott of the
Smithsonian photographic laboratory, who photographed the artifacts; and
George Harrison Sanford King of Fredericksburg, from whom the necessary
documentation for the 18th-century courthouse site was obtained.
I am grateful also to Dr. Anthony N. B. Garvan, professor of American
civilization at the University of Pennsylvania and former head curator
of the Smithsonian Institution's department of civil history, for
invaluable encouragement and advice; and to Worth Bailey formerly with
the Historic American Buildings Survey, for many ideas, suggestions, and
important identifications of craftsmen listed in Mercer's ledgers.
I am equally indebted to Ivor Noël Hume, director of archeology at
Colonial Williamsburg and an honorary research associate of the
Smithsonian Institution, for his assistance in the identification of
artifacts; to Mrs. Mabel Niemeyer, librarian of the Bucks County
Historical Society, for her cooperation in making the Mercer ledgers
available for this report; to Donald E. Roy, librarian of the Darlington
Library, University of Pittsburgh, for providing the invaluable clue
that directed me to the ledgers; to the staffs of the Virginia State
Library and the Alexandria Library for repeated courtesies and
cooperation; and to Miss Rodris Roth, associate curator of cultural
history at the Smithsonian, for detecting Thomas Oliver's inventory of
Marlborough in a least suspected source.
I greatly appreciate receiving generous permissions from the University
of Pittsburgh Press to quote extensively from the _George Mercer Papers
Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_, and from Russell & Russell to
copy Thomas Oliver's inventory of Marlborough.
To all of these people and to the countless others who contributed in
one way or another to the completion of this study, I offer my grateful
thanks.