THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609010066
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 95 lines
The new ferry landing at the foot of High Street is the cornerstone in the city's Vision 2005 plan - billed as a ``gateway'' to the future.
But construction workers digging that new riverfront inlet recently stumbled upon a vision of the city's past.
A Coast Guardsman who dabbles in archaeology had been regularly stopping by the construction site to watch out for artifacts.
Two weeks ago he noticed a patch of red brick.
``From the side it looked pretty much like a brick foundation or something that hadn't been disturbed,'' said U.S. Coast Guard Marine Science Technician 2nd Class Christopher Eckard.
He notified the state's Historic Resources Department.
David Hazzard, an archaeologist with the department's regional office in Portsmouth, spent three days defining, cleaning and mapping the area.
Hazzard, who is coordinator of the state's Threatened Sites Program, also took photographs to document the brick remains for the state's historical archives.
The base of the foundation is about 6 feet below the present-day surface, he said. But he estimates it could have been only 2 or 3 feet below the surface when it was built.
``It was sort of a fortuitous discovery to find such early remnants of Portsmouth's earliest history,'' he said.
Hazzard said an archaeological survey of the area had not been required before construction, because it was believed that the area had been ``pretty severely disturbed in the past.''
``The likelihood was that there were no surviving intact remains,'' he said.
But the archaeologist found two areas that had not been disturbed.
Hazzard said they uncovered three walls ``all sort of attached to one another.''
One wall might have been an 18th-century wall that later abutted a 19th-century wall, he said.
``We've got foundations for at least two buildings down there,'' he said.
The brick itself is difficult to date, although the mortar and bindings give clues.
``It's like looking at one small piece of an elephant and trying to reconstruct what the creature looks like,'' Hazzard said.
Artifacts he found around the foundation included fragments of lead-glazed earthenware from the late 1700s and part of a white salt-glazed stoneware mug, characteristic of the 1740s. He also found a green shell-edged pearlware plate fragment that looked like those used in the 1820s.
In one of the upper layers, he found a later 19th-century pharmaceutical bottle marked King and Toy, druggists in Norfolk. Old newspapers list a King and Toy stand at Portsmouth's waterfront market, he said.
Eckard, the archeology buff who noticed the wall, assisted Hazzard at the site. But he also started his own dig in the local history room of the Portsmouth Public Library.
Eckard spends most of his lunch hours doing research there anyway.
So with the help of Barnabas W. Baker, a local historian and former mayor who works in the history room, Eckard searched through old maps, deeds and papers.
At one time the waterfront property was owned by Col. Bernard Magnien, a Frenchman who came to America to fight with General Lafayette and then became a prominent Portsmouth citizen.
Magnien was a grenadier in the Revolutionary War and later became the colonel of the militia here. He served in the War of 1812.
After surviving two wars, he was killed when a plume or sword spooked his horse while someone was saluting him during a commemorative parade, Baker said.
When he died he owned 160 acres in and around Portsmouth, according to old newspapers.
A map dating to the year of his death shows ``Wood Wharf'' at the foot of High Street, where the new ferry dock will be. On the south side, where the brick wall was found, was the Magnien property.
Behind that was a blacksmith shop, followed by the original plantation home of Col. William Crawford, who founded Portsmouth.
But there were other owners before and after Magnien, and no one knows if the unearthed foundation belonged to him.
``It's hard to pin it down at this point,'' Hazzard said. ``We didn't excavate much, just documented what we found. It's sort of saved for the future.''
Hazzard doesn't think the area is in the way of construction. He has spoken to the city and Tidewater Construction Co. about the importance of the remains and said he has been told it will be left alone.
``We want to work with the developers to everybody's advantage,'' he said. ``What's important here is the waterfront. . . . It's the early history of Portsmouth, part of the vibrant commercial life of the town.
``In one sense the construction has brought this to life. Now we would just like to document what we see and leave the rest of it for historians in the future.'' ILLUSTRATION: MARK MITCHELL
The Virginian-Pilot
Archaeologist David Hazzard, left, examines a brick wall that was
unearthed during excavation for the new ferry landing in Portsmouth.
Coast Guardsman Christopher Eckard, right, discovered the patch of
old red bricks two weeks ago. by CNB