Page 71 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

Old Chapel Field), John Lewger (at St. John’s), and Thomas Gerard (at St. Clement’s). Each was sufficiently armed as evidenced by the gunflints, flint debitage, and dozens of lead shot recovered from each site (see table 2). A spur and a sword belt hook recovered from Old Chapel Field sug- gest the military appearance of at least one indi- vidual at the Jesuit mission (see figure 8). While exact numbers are not available for St. John’s, excavations undertaken in the 1970s are report- ed to have yielded 710 flint artifacts, including gunflints, gun spalls, strike-a-lights, and debitage. At St. John’s, flint artifacts were found clustered outside doorways, suggesting that knapping activities were taking place “mostly in the servants’ portions of the homelot....”33 These observations could suggest that firearms maintenance was a duty assigned to servants and/or slaves.
St. John’s, Old Chapel Field, and St. Clem- ent’s Manor were each a little more than a decade old when, in 1651, William and Magdalen Ste- vens established a plantation at the mouth of the Patuxent River in what is now Calvert County (see figure 1). While the Stevenses were not the first in the Patuxent valley, the site of their plan- tation dwelling is one of the earliest in that river
figure 7
Copper triangles/ fragments, copper scrap, and Indian tobacco pipes from St. Clements Manor (18ST794).
figure 8
Gunflints, flint flakes, lead shot, spur, and sword belt hook,
Old Chapel Field (18ST233).
figure 9
Conjectured plan
of the homelot at St. Clement’s Manor (18ST794) based
on shovel test data and limited testing. This plan should be considered a model for future testing.
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IMAGE BY SCOTT STRICKLAND
PHOTOGRAPH BY JULIA A. KING, COURTESY OF NAVAL AIR STATION
PATUXENT RIVER - WEBSTER FIELD ANNEX, NAVAL DISTRICT WASH- PHOTOGRAPH BY JULIA A. KING, COURTESY OF DR. JAMES CLIFTON INGTON. (USN RET.) AND MRS. JAMES CLIFTON.