Susan Miers Smith: Archaeological group digging up past lives at pre-Revolutionary War home in Berks [Video]

Apr. 18—Someone settled in next to the warmth and glow of the fireplace in the stone home in the village of Morlatton in Amity Township and was sewing.

It was sometime before the Revolutionary War, pins were inadvertently dropped and lost on the dirt floor. Some 100 years later a button was lost in the same area.

Fast forward to a rainy April morning in 2022 and a group of volunteers is digging up and sifting through that same dirt in front of the fireplace at the Mouns Jones House and is delighted to find the remnants of everyday life in the 1700s.

Members of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology Chapter 21 have been digging around the Douglassville site for 12 years, but only started digging inside the home in January.

For Gene Delaplane, the most interesting thing to have been unearthed from inside the house, which dates to 1716 and is the oldest home still standing in Berks County, are coins.

"We have found five coins dated between 1680 and 1731, plus one in 1807," Delaplane said.

The oldest one is believed to be a Charles II half-penny from Ireland, according to research by SPA Chapter 21 members.

The 82-year-old former history teacher from Exton, Chester County, is enthusiastic about all the finds, from shards of 18th and 19th century pottery to the corroded straight pins.

"Although things like Gene's talking about, coins — super fancy, super sexy — are what everybody likes, as a professional archaeologist, the information we can take from the deposits that we're excavating, that can tell us the story about the people who live here, is the most interesting thing we've found," said Richard White, 57, Abington Township, Montgomery County.

His day job is with A.D. Marble of King of Prussia, an environmental, cultural and engineering group.

"Just a brief look at the archaeological collections, we're definitely getting some really good information about what I think is sort of the end of the Mouns Jones occupancy here: lots of imported ceramics," White said. "We're also finding some evidence of maybe some possible architectural changes that occurred within the building itself, maybe during the late 18th, early 19th century."

One major structural change the group discovered over the past several years is where the door facing the river was located.

"We could tell on the inside and on the outside and when we dug down, we found steps going up there that were more modern. The steps over here were older," Delaplane said, gesturing toward the center of the home.

That discovery led to the rebuilding of the wall facing the Schuylkill River with a centered door.

The building and grounds are owned by the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County.

The Trust, Friends of Hopewell, Amity Township and the SPA Chapter 21 will be holding a joint festival on July 4th, Delaplane said.

"Amity Heritage Society is so fortunate to have this site and then Chapter 21 to interpret what is here for us," said Randy Van Fleet, 75, director of Amity Heritage Society. "We're consumers, they're producers. We're taking what they have found and, like what Rich said, we're just as interested in their interpretation as what they've got in their hand.

"Every historical researcher is looking for firsthand information. That's the Holy Grail. It doesn't get any more firsthand than this. You just dropped it out of your hand in 1725 and Gene picks it up and goes, 'Here's what that probably is.' "

Van Fleet said for the past 12 weeks the heritage society has been running Friday features on Mouns Jones on its Facebook page.

"We're trying to give him some of the credit that he hasn't gotten over the years," Van Fleet said of the Swedish immigrant also known as Magnus Jonasson and Mounce Jones. "Now, we have a chance to take it on to the next level, and we're very interested in every little thing and their interpretations of what it is so we can help get it as accurate as we can going forward."

Louis Farina, 87, of Landis Store in District Township was the senior SPA Chapter 21 member on site April 6 and was shoveling dirt from a 5-foot-by-5-foot square patch in the northeast corner of the home.

"I've been doing this for 50 years," said Farina, who became interested in archaeology when his son went to summer camp along the Delaware River and was involved in a dig at an Indian village there.

Farina is a charter member of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology Chapter 21, which was established on April 27, 1974, and is now officially known as the John Shrader Chapter in honor of another founding member.

One of his proudest accomplishments at the Mouns Jones site was putting the pieces of a ceramic pitcher back together. The SPA group had inherited a box of artifacts dug up by Boy Scouts in 1957. He said he spent about three months gluing the pieces back together.

"I had a little trouble with it because it's not completely round as you can see, which threw me off and I thought maybe I wasn't gluing it right, but eventually after laying it out on paper with the rims, I seen that it wasn't circular," Farina explained. "It looks like the kind of pitcher they used back in the Colonial times for milk because it's glazed on the outside and glazed on the inside."

Delaplane said SPA Chapter 21 has as many as 17 of its 24 members digging at the site on a Saturday. On April 6, there were six men working on the site.

Kevin Keifrider, 55, an Amity Township supervisor, operated the sifter as Ken Biles, 76, another retired teacher from Amity Township, dumped buckets of dirt into it. Biles then removed chunks of earth from the found artifacts with a trowel and toothbrush. Ryan Whiteneck, 39, of Pottstown helped Farina shovel dirt from the floor into buckets and helped White log where items were found.

Eventually, the found items will be cleaned and catalogued by Rachael Smith, who received a master's degree in archaeology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2021.

Delaplane said she has been working with the group since she was in sixth grade.

To volunteer

People who are interested in volunteering to dig at the Mouns Jones site and would like to join the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology John Shrader Chapter 21 should call Gene Delaplane at 484-341-8775