Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993                   TAG: 9308220025
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: E-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOWLING GREEN                                LENGTH: Medium

WHERE DID GEORGE PUT CORNERSTONE?

Workers from the U.S. Geodetic Survey's Caroline office have been aiding the search for the stone while conducting several surveying projects in the building.

This isn't the first time the surveyors from Caroline have been called on for a big project. They've also worked at the White House.

"To me, the excitement of the job was just the fact that you are working in the national Capitol," said Leo Gittings, a Spotsylvania County resident who helped direct the survey project. "It's a unique job, to say the least."

In the cornerstone search, workers have dug a hole in the floor of a basement corridor linking the House and Senate, and now are drilling for proof that they have the real thing.

Using old records, the surveyors from Caroline suggested several possible locations, including the one where officials have uncovered a finished piece of carved sandstone that looks like an old cornerstone.

"We don't have conclusive evidence yet that that is the cornerstone, " said Bill Raines, administrative assistant to the Capitol architect. "They're close. There are those who say that certainly has the appearance" of the cornerstone.

The cornerstone has eluded crews for eight years, and officials say they would like to find it before the Capitol's bicentennial next month.

Officials first thought the stone was at the southeast corner of the original Senate building, because it was completed first. But now they are looking at the northeast side of the original House building.

"They were just guessing," said Charlie Glover, another Spotsylvania County resident who helped with Geodetic's surveys of the building last year. "We got all the records and started measuring some things, and it's a long way from where they think it is now."

What officials need now is to strike silver. Before Washington laid the stone in 1793, a silver plate was laid beneath the rock. Workers digging around the stone are looking either for the plate or for silver residue that might have leached into nearby areas.

"The silver plate is going to be the key to it, or some indication of leaching in the soil to indicate that the silver is decomposed," Raines said.

Right now, Raines said, there isn't enough evidence to know where the rock that became the cornerstone was quarried. Some of the stone used on the Capitol came from a quarry near Aquia Creek in Stafford County.