Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 1, 1993 TAG: 9312010262
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Medium
They farmed their land without slaves - a sign of poverty, not of humanity. Their house was no bigger than a modern-day master bedroom. Most of their dishes, pots and kitchen containers were made of cheap ceramics, the Tupperware of the day.
They didn't grow much tobacco and food, but they had to sell some of it to buy needles, salt and other things they couldn't make. And the Ross daughters didn't come with dowries.
"They were marginally surviving," said Franklin H. Farmer, archeologist at NASA-Langley Research Center, where a portion of the farmstead recently was unearthed in a clump of trees. "From generation to generation, they were just barely making it."
The site is not only of local historical interest, archeologists say, but also of national anthropological interest.
Little is known about the lives of poor 17th- and 18th-century farmers, archeologists say, because plantations far outnumbered small farms and because historians have been more interested in wealthy and middle-class farmers.
NASA officials are impressed enough with this discovery to nominate the Ross farmstead for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
It probably would not have been found - at least not now - if not for a desire by Langley planners to build a maintenance complex: three prefabricated buildings where plumbers, electricians and carpenters will be based.
Because NASA-Langley is a federal facility, its planners must determine were there is anything of historical or cultural value in the soil that might bedisturbed by construction of a building. So they set out to do that before the buildings were put in place.
"Going into this, we didn't know the site would be of historical significance," said NASA-Langley master planner John L. Mouring Jr.
Archaeologists, led by Jerome D. Traver of MAAR Associates Inc., of James City County, plotted 3.4 acres, where the complex was to be located, and dug holes every 60 feet.
They sifted dirt from the holes through wire-mesh screens, leaving fragments of brick, ceramics, nails and oyster shells on the screens. The initial digging also turned up a post mold, a round, dark stain in the soil where a post to support a house once was anchored. Twenty feet away, another post mold was found.
"That was an accidental find," Traver said. "At that point, we felt we were onto something. We knew we had a domestic site."
After the post molds were found, a second round of digging began.
In all, they found 8,211 artifacts, most of which are pieces of pottery, oyster shells, bricks and mortar.
The dig also turned up shards of glass, bone and teeth, a couple of buttons and brass tacks and several pieces of pipe stems and nails.
Farmer said NASA won't pay for further excavation at the site. But he said that doesn't preclude a professor or archeologist from applying for a grant to dig further. "We don't have many sites that tell us about the lives of subsistence farmers," Farmer said. "But we have one here. There's a lot more to learn from this site."
by CNB