Work continued primarily on the north foundation wall on Friday -- actually work continued on TWO north foundation walls. Rather than having a separate foundation for the belltower, the church appears to have had two large east-west foundation walls running parallel to each other about four feet apart to support the additional weight of the tower.
After another long week of hard labor, both the project staff and crew were more than ready for a weekend of rest. We made a lot of progress on Friday, but haven't quite got the new excavation areas cleaned up well enough for another "aerial photo" showing the entire front wall digs. We should have another photo taken from my perch atop the ladder for Monday's journal entry.
The first photograph is an area photo taken on June 17 -- the circles and numbers indicate "areas" shown in the subsequent photographs for June 20.
AREA 1 PHOTOS (lower-case letters in these photos are labelling the foundation stones for your reference):
Left: Photo from June 19. Center: Photo of same excavation area on June 20. Right: Photo of the adjacent excavation unit started on June 19 -- the foundation wall is already showing up just beneath the sod in this area.
AREA 2 PHOTOGRAPHS:
This photograph from June 19 shows the locations of the following two photographs -- the cross-hatched area is where the second (interior) north foundation showed up; the arrow points to the area shown in the second photograph where the four courses of stacked limestone blocks are illustrated.
This photograph shows the substantial one-meter wide interior north foundation wall already emerging in this excavation unit (the cross-hatched area in the photo immediately preceding). The yellow lines show the width of this foundation wall -- the same as the exterior north foundation wall.
This photograph shows the surviving four courses of stacked limestone in the exterior north foundation wall (labeled 1-4). The bottom course (#4) is not completely exposed yet. This massive foundation supported the weight of two-stories of brick building AND a 70-foot-high belltower -- hence the need for such a deep foundation. While difficult to determine absolutely, our current evidence suggests that at least two (and possibly three) additional courses of stone stood on top of these originally.
Mixed amongst the rubble filling the "cellar" between the interior and exterior foundation walls, we recovered two fragments of grave markers (one is shown above). Other artifacts associated with these two fragments clearly indicate that these were tumbled into the deposit when the church was destroyed in 1863-1864. Both fragments appear to be unweathered (in other words, they were fairly freshly cut tombstones and had not been exposed for very long to the elements before they were deposited in the "cellar"). Two possible interpretations are possible for how these two fragments came to be in the rubble pile: (a) they were markers broken during manufacture for graves of soldiers who died in the "church hospital;" or (b) they were tombstones already in place in the cemetery broken during the occupation of the church -- as suggested by some of our diary and letter entries. Given the unweathered appearance of the fragments, we are leaning towards the first interpretation at this point.
AREA 3 PHOTOGRAPHS:
In the area marked 3 on the first photograph, a scatter of brick and limestone was identified as a "possible feature" to investigate. Although it really didn't look like much on the surface, excavation revealed a very large and deep hole with a flat bottom -- the artifacts included in it suggest that it dates to the period of construction of the church.
One of the crew volunteered to serve as a "scale" for the size of this feature.
Interpretation of the function of this feature will require some further investigation -- there are three-four additional scatters of brick and limestone roughly lined up along the front of the church that appear very similar on the surface. Once we investigate those, we will have a bit more information to work with on interpretation. At this point, we are working with several hypotheses that may or may not "pan out" in the longer run: (a) the feature may represent a posthole for a large scaffolding post used in the construction of the church -- in order to lay bricks two stories in height (and to construct the even higher belltower), workers would have needed to raise an extensive scaffolding around the exterior of the church; (b) the feature might represent some kind of "decorative" pillars or markers in front of the church; or (c) it might be something else entirely!
Generally, the artifacts in this feature indicate that it was probably filled back in during the construction of the church -- not during its destruction. However, interpretation will require that we examine the other similar-looking features to the west -- if we have a row of holes of similar size and equally spaced, then we will have a stronger basis for arguing that these were scaffolding posts.
We probably won't have time to answer all of these questions before the end of our "digs" on July 3 -- but we will have enough solid information to nominate the church for the National Register of Historic Places.
Our goals for our remaining week-and-a-half of labor at the site include clarifying the two north foundation walls, identifying the two southern corners, and investigating the various possible postholes and other features already exposed.
If all works as planned, we will have the front wall units cleaned up by Monday afternoon for photographs -- I'll be hauling my taller ladder in for what should be an impressive aerial!