Page 132 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

figure 13
Aerial photograph showing the predicted location of Tracy’s Ordinary (B) and the Church, Courthouse, and Jail (A), based
on historical and/ or archaeological research.
figure 14
Pipe stems recovered from surface collection at Charles Tracy’s ordinary.
material located to the south of this complex of buildings may represent Thomas Hollyday’s store. There is no record of Hollyday’s lot being trans- ferred to anyone else after his death so it may have been abandoned. Another possibility is that Josiah Wilson took possession of this lot. A warehouse “at the waterside” is listed in his will and testa- ment, but there is no record of how he acquired this warehouse or where it was located.
On the way to the Courthouse
A fourth activity node was located along the main road roughly 450 feet south of Thomas Hollyday’s store. A concentration of tobacco pipe fragments, olive bottle glass, and colonial ceramics was iden- tified during a surface collection. This concentra-
tion of material is located on the western edge of the 21⁄2-acre lot Charles Tracy leased from William Groome in 1695. This was the lot where Tracy kept an ordinary until his death in 1698. Most of Tracy’s lot is currently located on private property and follow-up archaeological excavations have not been completed where the concentration of artifacts was recovered. The small archaeologi- cal assemblage recovered from the surface collec- tion provides very little evidence about the daily operation of Tracy’s ordinary, but the historical record provides some information.
Tracy operated his business at the same time that both William Groome and Jonathan Willson were engaged in the town. There is very little in- formation on Groome’s ordinary, but Willson ap- pears to have operated at a larger scale than Tracy. Tracy offered mostly cider and rum with an occa- sional service of punch and flipp. Willson offered a more expansive selection of drinks including cider, rum, beer, punch, flipp, lemonado, Samson, and wine. It also appears that Willson offered bet- ter accommodations for lodging than Tracy based on a comparison of their estate inventories.35
David Small was Tracy’s largest creditor at his death and was thus assigned as the adminis- trator of the estate. Small retained the lot until selling it to Thomas Emms for £50 in 1700. It was also at this time that Small relinquished his in- terest in the 163 acre parcel he and Emms leased from William Groome. Emms retained Tracy’s lot until 1703 when he sold it to James Stoddert. Stoddert retained it until his death in 1726.
Even though this lot was not near the land- ing, it held an even more advantageous position, being less than a thousand feet north of the church and courthouse. Emms and then Stod- dert would have taken advantage of this location in profiting from the many landless keepers will- ing to operate out of the building. Based on the timing of ordinary licenses granted we could es- timate the possible succession of keepers as Jane Beall (1700-1703), Marmaduke Scott (1703- 1709), Ann Skinner (1710-1711), John Middle- ton (1712-1714), and Mary Gwynn (1715). The historical evidence about each of these individu- als is virtually non-existent other than scattered records on their ordinary businesses. The fact that Skinner, Middleton, and Gwynn kept ordinaries for a short time in other towns at some point in their careers, is a testament to the itinerant nature of ordinary keeping and the difficulty in assigning archaeological data to a particular keeper.
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HOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL T. LUCAS, COURTESY OF THE MARYLAND- MAP BY SUSAN WINCHELL-SWEENEY. NATIONAL CAPITAL PARK AND PLANNING COMMISSION.