Recently discovered trove of artifacts ‘changing the narrative of Connecticut history’
A button. Broken bits of crockery. Beads made of shells. Copper coins, darkened by dirt and corrosion.
The eyes of the casual observer might pass over items such as these. But to the archaeological team that found the items in Wethersfield, the artifacts are thrilling, telling stories they hadn’t heard before.
“This is changing the narrative of Connecticut history,” one historian said.
Generations of families have visited Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum to wander through the 18th-century dwellings and learn about life in Revolutionary War-era Connecticut. But an archaeological dig at the historical site, which was completed over the summer, has flipped the script on the homesite’s lineage.
The dig revealed more than 100,000 artifacts, some substantial in size, some tiny. This trove of stuff fleshes out what historians knew about life all the way back to the 1630s, when English settlers first came to the place that the native Wangunk people called Pyquag.
Now called Wethersfield, it has been known for decades as the state’s “most ancient town.”
State Historian Walt Woodward called the archaeological findings “astonishing.”
“The Webb-Deane-Stevens house is, of course, most closely associated with the 18th century, with Washington and Rochambeau, the American Revolution, that period,” Woodward said. “People haven’t thought about it as a site connected with life 140 or 150 years earlier.”
With the new discoveries, Woodward dubbed the Webb-Deane-Stevens site “the Jamestown of Connecticut,” referring to the Virginia site that was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. “The first half of Connecticut’s history can be told in an acre or two of land,” he said.
Or as Joshua Torrance, the newly appointed director of the museum, put it, “We’re all history geeks, so we’re all geeking out. This is changing the narrative of Connecticut history.”
Archaeological sensitivity
The property on which Webb-Deane-Stevens complex sits has been inhabited by European settlers since the 1630s, starting with Clement Chaplin. But the buildings now on the site date to the 18th century, and evidence of Chaplin’s era has been buried for centuries.
In recent years, the management of the museum complex wanted to add an education and visitors’ center. First, they had to make sure the building project wouldn’t destroy historically significant matter.
“Because of the archaeological sensitivity of the area where the building was proposed to be constructed, the state mandated that there be an archaeological survey undertaken,” said Richard C. Malley, interim co-executive director of the museum.
The museum, which is owned by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Connecticut, brought in Public Archaeology Survey Team Inc. of Storrs. The project was headed by Meg Harper, the director of PAST, and her husband Ross Harper, who has been field director and senior archaeologist at Webb-Deane-Stevens for PAST since the late 1990s, when the firm started doing digs there.
Digging began in 2016, eventually covering an area measuring about 8 by 4 meters, going as deep as 4 1/2 feet below the surface, said Harper.
Each layer of digging revealed items going farther and farther back in time.
“Moving through the layers, they encountered layers of debris that they believe were dumped there while constructing the Silas Deane house,” which was finished in 1769, Malley said. “That helped cap that early layer and helped preserve the artifacts below.”
Historical artifacts
Among the finds were about a dozen copper British farthings, dating from the era of Charles I, who reigned from 1625 to 1649; and little wampum beads made from quahog or whelk shells, which were used as currency when trading with the native Wangunk and Pequot tribes. There was also an early 17th century button, a tobacco pipe, glass beads, a chunk of early 17th century pottery made in Portugal and a piece of a saucer made in Italy.
Most prized of all was not an object. It was a long stain in the soil, the shadow of what once was a palisade, or a barrier wall, protecting the Chaplin home during the Pequot War (1637-1638).
The researchers don’t know yet if the palisade protected only Chaplin’s home, or if it extended to protect several other residences that may have been in the area.
Kevin McBride, associate professor of anthropology at UConn, researches battle sites of the Pequot War and King Philip’s War, another Native-settler conflict, which took place from 1675 to 1678. His work is funded by grants from the National Parks Service. McBride said palisades were built throughout the region at the time of the Pequot War.
“The Connecticut settlements were clearly concerned about Pequot attacks during the war. They all built palisades. These suggested anticipation of conflict,” McBride said. “I don’t think there was a physical attack on that palisade. But it is exciting, a fantastic site.”
Colonial life
These artifacts help historians flesh out the life and times of the earliest English settlers of the region, especially Chaplin. “It’s one thing to say, this is how we think they lived, but now we can speak very specifically about what they were doing,” Harper said.
Chaplin, a chandler (candle-maker), left England on the Elizabeth & Ann, first settling in what is now Cambridge, Mass., in 1635. He later moved to what is now Connecticut and by May 1637, when the Pequot War began, was living in what is now Wethersfield.
Chaplin was a controversial figure. He had theological conflicts with other settlers, first in Cambridge, then in Wethersfield, Harper said.
“Then there were intense conflicts in the church in Wethersfield. Chaplin was at the forefront of that. ... He was a very contentious person,” he said. At one point, Chaplin was fined by the courts for speaking ill of another settler.
In the mid-1640s, Chaplin moved back to England. The Wolcott family purchased the property in Wethersfield. Malley said the Wolcotts either built a new house on the property or expanded on Chaplin’s.
What the archaeological findings say about the early residents was that they were not isolated from the world, as is often believed, but actively participated in international trade.
“We’re finding ceramics from the Iberian Peninsula, from northern Italy, from all over,” Malley said. “The families who lived here were able to have items from different parts of Europe.
Harper added, “We knew Chaplin was a man of wealth, but to see it physically manifested is really interesting.”
The “Atlantic world” showed up in later findings on the site, in the form of a 1682 silver two-reale coin from Spain.
Harper said there is another important 17th century archaeological site, the John Hollister site in Glastonbury, but its artifacts date to later in the 1600s. “There are a few Native American sites in Connecticut of this early historic time period, but not English,” he said.
A hard life
The findings also point out the settlers routinely traded with the Wangunk and Pequot people, as evidenced by the wampum. “There was a paradox there. They had fear of Native Americans, but they really needed the food they sold them,” Harper said.
Some other findings point to what the settlers ate. Remnants of food items were found on the site: nuts, seeds, animal bones, corn.
“They incorporated Native American corn fully into their diet, and beans and squash. That was a huge shift from European grains. It was a hard life in the colonies. This shows they were struggling, but they adapted quickly,” Harper said.
The presence of the palisade, which brings up the ghosts of violent conflict, adds to the story of this hard life. In the end, that life was even harder for the native tribes, Woodward explained, citing the Pequot War.
That war was the result of years of escalating tensions between English and Dutch settlers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island and the native tribes, centering on trade and access to scarce food supplies. These tensions, complicated by shifting loyalties, led to violent clashes and burnt-down villages.
A Wangunk-Pequot raid on Wethersfield on April 23, 1637, in which nine colonists and several livestock were killed, pushed the Connecticut River settlements to band together, raise a militia and choose a leader, John Mason. On May 26, Mason led a raid on two Pequot villages in Mystic, killing hundreds of men, women and children.
“It was very common for Europeans to fight that way. They had been fighting total wars in Europe over religion for centuries. But for Native people it was an unbelievable amount of carnage,” Woodward said. “The Pequot War was over by the end of the summer. The English won. It left generations of tension and unrest between English and Native people. The whole history of conflict between people who became Americans and the indigenous began in Wethersfield in 1637.”
That hard life didn’t appeal to some settlers, even wealthy ones, such as Chaplin, who eventually went back home to England. Harper said that dimension adds to the historical narrative, too.
“That’s not the classical part of the story. The classical story is, Pilgrims came, they endured, they stayed. But sometimes it didn’t work out,” he said. “One in four went back and never came back.”
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
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