Twenty years ago, two young archaeology students, David Brown and Thane Harpole, surveyed a farmstead site located in Gloucester County, Virginia, dating to the late 17th to early 18th centuries. The property was originally patented in the 1670s by Robert Bryan and was eventually part of the adjacent Belle Farm plantation. After the Civil War, […]
The Hall Site: A “Hallmark” of Mathews County
Guest Blog author Katie Brauckmann has worked with the Fairfield Foundation/DATA Investigations for three years, first as a volunteer and intern, and now as a part-time employee. Katie is a sophomore anthropology major at James Madison University. The Hall Site (44MT0173) is a predominately 18th-century site located in Mathews County, Virginia. Conrad Hall, former President […]
A Long-Lost Site Reveals Many Stories at York County’s New Quarter Park
By guest blogger Sara E. Lewis If you’ve never joined the Fairfield Foundation for a public dig at New Quarter Park in York County, then you’re missing out on some exciting finds! In the most recent round of excavations, a young volunteer was excited to find this Very Cool Artifact: a locally-made tobacco pipe stem […]
Discovering history at Mathews Market Days
The Fairfield Foundation hosted a very successful public outreach excavation during Mathews County’s annual Market Days festival in September. More than 40 eager kids and adults helped us excavate four 5′ square units in two days. These units helped investigate the site of a former hotel located along Main Street, providing more clues about how this area was […]
Extraction and Excavation: Archaeology of a Collapsed House Ruin
The house is magnificent. It is everything that you would want in an 18th-century Virginia manor- symmetry, mass, rhythm- and it sits boldly on an elevated landscape surrounded by extensive cropland rimmed with forest and descending towards complex terraced gardens and a wide creek in the distance. It also stands out in the Flemish-bond land of Tidewater, with its rough, […]
Fairfield, Abingdon, and Carter’s Grove, 1924
One of the most interesting emails we’ve received in the Fairfield Foundation’s sixteen year existence arrived on March 9th at 11:09 pm. The subject line was simple: Old Pictures. It started our minds racing, especially after more than 15 years of researching the history of Fairfield plantation, and the Burwell, Thruston, and other families that lived […]
Archaeology in Search of Thomas Carter
When you mention the Carters of Lancaster County, or Virginia in general, the typical Virginia history buff thinks of the remarkably wealthy and powerful Robert “King” Carter, wealthiest man in Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century. Unbeknownst to most, though, is an unrelated but important family of Carters who also settled in Lancaster, not […]
Tales from the ground at Rosewell
Over the past year and a half we have been doing limited archaeological testing around the Rosewell ruin in preparation for the installation of new interpretive signs as well as for tree plantings. We do this work because the Rosewell site is under a protective historic easement held by the Department of Historic Resources, and […]
Toddsbury: Rediscovering a Lost Plantation Landscape
Five buildings in one day. Not even a full day – maybe half a day. In the span of about four hours our entire perspective of Toddsbury, one of Gloucester County’s best known and most beloved historic properties, changed completely. Alongside residents Mollie, Mary and Carter (grand-daughter, mother and grand-mother), whose personal history at this […]
New Quarter Park: Award-Winning Volunteer Involvement in Archaeology!
Following our fourth public archaeology dig at New Quarter Park in York County, we are as excited as ever about the amazing archaeological discoveries that volunteers are helping reveal at this site. At New Quarter Park we have enjoyed tremendous success excavating and finding remarkable things, partnering with several community organizations (including New Quarter Park, York County […]
