Another beautiful day for archaeological fieldwork at the Old First Presbyterian Church site. We made some excellent progress today on exposing the northern 1/3 of the church structure.

As shown in the photograph below, we have located the northeastern corner of the church -- including a 2-meter long section of the east wall and a 6-meter long section of the north wall. In addition, another likely foundation wall (needs a little more digging before we can be certain!) is probably an interior foundation for the eastern church gallery. An extension of the north foundation uncovered today is probably the foundation for the church belltower -- a feature that reached 70 feet into the air.

A closeup of one of the excavation units shows the foundation features in more detail. The brick rubble in the foreground of this image is a pile created during the demolition of the church in 1864. An interesting thing to note -- if you look carefully, you will see that there are no whole bricks remaining. This tends to support a letter written by one of the 1860s church members stating that the bricks were carted off to be used by soldiers to build chimneys and ovens for their winter "huts." The winter of 1863-64 was particularly harsh and soldiers stationed in the area were undoubtedly desperate for some relief from the winter chill. At this early stage, it does appear that the whole bricks were carted off -- and all we have remaining in the rubble are broken fragments.

Another existing find of the day was a probable posthole filled with brick rubble -- highlighted in the photograph below. No really, it is exciting! While not perhaps as visually stimulating as solid limestone blocks in a church foundation or as intriguing as a tiny harp charm, one of our project goals is to locate where the fence surrounding the church lot was located -- and what it looked like. The brick rubble was probably packed into the the hole created when this post was removed sometime between 1862 and 1864. At a time when horses were a prominent means of transportation, leaving gaping postholes in the yard surrounding the church would have not been a good idea! The size of the posthole and the spacing of these holes will give us a good idea of what the fence looked like. We also hope to be able to find the original gates in the fencelines by the spacing of posts.

We are continuing and starting excavations in several other areas not shown in today's photographs. One crew continued work trying to locate the base of the pulpit in the south-central portion of the church. the pulpit was a substantial feature of the church -- standing three feet in height, long enough to seat three people, and with two stairways. We hope that it was substantial enough to require a stone or brick foundation that will remain for us to find. Another crew continued working to locate the south wall of the church -- but hasn't gotten deep enough to expose it yet. Yet another crew started work exposing the northwest corner of the church. And yet another crew started work to find the second posthole in the fence surrounding the church lot.

If the rain doesn't come too often as the week progresses, we should be posting photographs of several of the parts of the church as the week progresses.