Another solid day of work at the Old First Presbyterian Church site. Despite the fact that this was our "record warm day" of the project, the crew kept up a solid pace of investigation -- our days in the field are numbered, and we have a few more questions we would like to answer before we close up.

In yesterday's report, we featured another emerging large posthole (marked in blue in the following photo).

Yesterday, the posthole and postmold appeared like this:

Upon excavation, the posthole turned out to be an enormous flat-bottomed posthole (with crew member for scale again). The size of this feature, the incredibly dense packing of brick and limestone rubble in the hole surrounding the post, and its placement directly to the right of the main entry into the church suggests that it may represent one of the pillars supporting the belltower.

We have another feature very similar in appearance and located in the same position directly to the left of the main entry into the church -- we will probably be able to investigate that feature on Wednesday.

The crew working on the west foundation wall of the church was once again disappointed in their search for intact foundation walls -- it appears that the majority of the stone on the west wall has been removed at some point in the past. As the following photograph shows, the trench excavated to place the stones remains -- but it was once again empty of limestone blocks.

Given the types of artifacts being recovered from the deposits in the builder's trench, it appears most likely that these stones were removed at or about the time of the demolition of the church in 1863-64. However, we'll have to await complete analysis in the laboratory of the artifacts from this feature to make a final interpretation.

Given the information we now have, two crews started excavation of 2x2 meter units over where we believe the southeast corner (below left) and southwest corner (below right) should be located. Probing suggests that the southwest corner may have escaped the pillaging of limestone blocks elsewhere on the west wall -- Wednesday should tell that tale.

Investigations on the northeast corner of the church foundation continued and were completed today. As the photograph below shows, the interior foundation does continue to meet the east foundation wall.

Those of you who have been keeping up daily may recall a discovery reported on June 9 of a probable posthole for the fence surrounding the church lot -- that feature is shown in the photograph below as it appeared on June 9.

We finally got around to investigating that feature today -- that posthole is marked (B) on the following photograph. While the upper portion of the posthole was round, the postmold itself was nicely square -- suggesting a post for a nice fence surrounding the church lot. In additional investigations, we found another probable posthole (marked A in the photo) located eight feet from the first. The second posthole (A) is much larger and deeper than the first, but also nicely squared off at the bottom. Given the size and location of this posthole, we think it is probable that it was a gatepost for a gate into the Presbyterian Church graveyard to the east.

As the following edited photograph from June 17 shows, this fence would have separated the church from the cemetery -- and the large post (A) would have been in a convenient location for a gate into the cemetery. The family plots in the cemetery start immediately outside this postulated fenceline (the obelisks are visible in the background).

If time permits, we will try to confirm this hypothesis by opening some selected units to find another gatepost and another fencepost on this line in the next few days.