On March 31, 2012, we celebrated the return of blacksmithing to the Anderson site, and the addition of foodways programming in the new kitchen.  We were gratified by the interest of our guests- those in attendance, and those observing via the web.  Attendance at the shop has been strong in the weeks following our opening ceremonies, with afternoon visitation hovering around 500 people per hour on most days.  Our opening ceremony has prompted many to ask, now what?

Armoury layout (click for larger image.)

Remember that this opening ceremony was a “soft opening.”  We wanted to acknowledge the blacksmiths’ return to the Anderson site, and to begin programming in the new kitchen, but the Armoury project is far from complete.  In fact, we are only about halfway finished with construction.  This year we will be building three structures- a shed in the yard for vehicle storage, a storage building adjacent to the south end of the Armoury building, and the tinsmith shop adjacent to the northwest side of the Armoury. 

With all of this construction still to come,  the carpenters have returned to Great Hopes Farm site to prepare materials for new buildings.  They are processing framing and roofing material for the shed and storage building as I write, and will begin on siding soon.  Plans are to raise the shed frame in a week or two, and the storage building frame sometime in June.  Framing of the tinsmith shop should begin by late summer (currently you can watch the brick masons laying the foundations on the webcam) and should be complete and ready to open by March or April of 2013.  We will then turn our attention to a workshop and second storage building on the southern half of the Anderson lot, with plans to finish the structures by late summer of 2013.   

For the blacksmith crew, this rigorous construction schedule means a couple of things:  first of all, nails will be needed in large quantity once again.  The shed will require about 1,000 nails, the storage building about 5,000, and the tinshop perhaps 12,000 nails.  Anticipating this need, we have been making about 100 nails each day in between our other work (see my earlier posts on nailmaking).  In fact, we use nailmaking as a warm-up activity each morning, and an activity to keep us busy at the forge when time doesn’t allow for more complex work ( at the end of the day when it is too late to start something new, for instance).  One hundred nails a day will produce over 30,000 nails in a year- enough to keep the carpenters well-supplied.  In addition to nails, the storage building and tinsmith shop will also require hinges and locks for doors and shutters.  These will be made as the buildings near completion.

Several of our readers wondered if the type of work demonstrated by blacksmiths will change now that we are working in the new venue.  I do anticipate new work that reflects activity typical of the armoury.  In coordination with members of the Powder Magazine staff we are developing programs to illustrate weapon cleaning and maintenance, and we will be making specialized tooling for manufacture of replacement parts for muskets.  In my research on contemporary Virginia armouries, I have accumulated tool inventories for the workshops which provide insight into work activities- manufacture of screws, manufacture of ramrods, and other small components.  We plan to replicate tooling and work with Magazine staff to make repairs to muskets used in our programming.   Museum demands for ironwork are similar to wartime demands for ironwork, so while we show military repair, we will continue to make common consumer ironwork.  Throughout James Anderson’s wartime accounts, that mix of military and consumer work is seen- delivering 1,000 refurbished muskets to the guard at Charlottesville, and then repairing a lock for a dairy door and making a replacement key for a lock.  Our shop will reflect that mix of wartime military and civilian work.

In fact, at present we are involved in completing furnishings for the kitchen.  As we bring activity into new spaces, we can anticipate most of the furnishing requirements, but often discover unanticipated needs for tools, utensils, or hardware necessary for our specialized programming.  We are finishing some ladles and skimmers for the cooking staff, and are working on a peel for the bread oven.  In recent days we have made additional trivets and pot hooks for the kitchen fireplace.  We have a couple of door locks to finish for the Armoury itself, as the limited workspace in the Deane Shop slowed our ability to produce hardware for the Armoury, putting us slightly behind in the schedule.  The additional workspace in the new shop will allow us more production capacity, putting us back on schedule.

On the subject of work space, the new Armoury building has exceeded expectations. In addition to the increased space, lighting is exceptional, and as the first warm days of spring arrived, we appreciated the increased airflow within the shop.   I anticipate that July and August will bring their typical heat and humidity.  Having plenty of windows to open will at least allow air to move through the building, easing our summertime discomfort. 

The building trades and the blacksmithing program (as well as all of the Historic Trades workshops) never experience a dull moment- there is no opportunity to rest on past success.   At Colonial Williamsburg, history never stands still; we are always adding new structures and new programming to the Historic Area and adding to our guest’s experience.  These additions require products of our Historic Trades programs- the “things” that allow our people to bring history to life.  So completion of the Armoury workshop simply means the beginning of the story’s next chapter. I hope that you will continue to follow along.

-Contributed by Kenneth Schwarz, Master Blacksmith

Watch the video.

Photo credits: Meredith Poole and Clyde Kestner.

The Anderson kitchen before furnishing.

As the opening of the Armoury site draws closer, we thought it might be interesting to include a blog entry that focused on the Armoury kitchen furnishings.  This past year, the curators have worked on researching and acquiring authentic objects to furnish this unique kitchen.  The Armoury kitchen is unlike any of Colonial Williamsburg’s other furnished kitchens in that it was used to prepare massive quantities of food for the Armoury’s 40 workers! 

How did we decide what objects to place in the kitchen?  Since we do not have an inventory telling us for certain, we can only make an educated guess as to which objects were really there during the Revolutionary War.  There was very little archaeological evidence left intact around kitchen to suggest which objects were used there during the Armoury period.  Instead, we allowed James Anderson’s account book (owned by the DAR library and transcribed by Master Blacksmith Ken Schwarz) to help us understand how the kitchen was used, and which objects would have been essential to Anderson’s operation. 

From the large quantities of salted meats and flour coming to the Armoury, it became clear that the Armoury worker’s diet closely resembled the common soldier’s daily military ration. Animal bones recovered by our archaeologists and analyzed by zooarchaeologist, Joanne Bowen, helped to identify cuts of meat that were prepared in the Armoury kitchen.  Many of these cuts were tough and were likely stewed, suggesting both a method of cooking…and the pot to cook it in.  In addition to large stews, the Armoury cooks were certainly baking bread for the men.  Even though we have not yet found archaeological evidence of a bake oven on the site, it would have been much cheaper to make the bread on site than to purchase it.  We made the decision to order a dough trough and iron and wooden bread peels to indicate the large scale bread production that likely took place right outside of the kitchen.

 Due to the fact that the Armoury Kitchen will be fully functioning, with cooking demonstrations for our visitors, we are unable to furnish it with antique objects.  All objects needed for installation had to be ordered and reproduced for the kitchen.  But we are incredibly fortunate to be able to work closely with the Historic Trades department; using antique prototypes from the Colonial Williamsburg collection, we have been able to produce some of the most authentic reproductions possible.  The joiners made the kitchen table and pine press, the blacksmiths made all of the iron objects for the fireplace and cooking equipment (andirons, tongs, shovel, trammel, pot hooks, flesh forks, spoons/ladles), the coopers produced barrels, wash tubs, and buckets, and the basket weavers made utilitarian baskets to hold everything from vegetables to flatware for the table.  We did have to order some items from outside vendors, including tinware, which was made by Master Tinsmith, William McMillen and the stoneware storage containers, which were ordered from Westmoore Pottery in North Carolina.  Since the Armoury workers were surrounded by and working with metal, we believe that tin cups and plates were used by Armoury workers at the table.  Similarly, other tin forms -funnels, graters, canisters, and coffee pots- likely saw heavy use in the kitchen.  These items were cheap and quickly made in the Armoury tin shop next door.

We look forward to installing kitchen furnishings in the Anderson kitchen on the morning of Friday, March 30^th, just before the Armoury’s (March 31^st) opening. We hope you will watch via the Roving Webcam and enjoy behind-the-scenes fun as the curators install these objects in the kitchen.   Our Historic Foodways department will begin cooking demonstrations in the Armoury kitchen the very next day on March 31^st.  We can’t wait to see what our talented staff in Historic Foodways cook up for the Armoury workers next week!

-Submitted by Amanda Rosner Keller, Assistant Curator of Historic Interiors and Household Accessories

Jay Howlett adjusts one set of bellows.

The images below, captured late last week and early this morning, record some of the final preparations for the Armoury’s March 31^st opening.  The building has been painted, inside and out, bellows are being adjusted and hung, and the blacksmiths’ tools, carted over from the Deane Forge, are now hanging in their places.   Visitors familiar with the former Anderson Blacksmith Shop will notice some new “furniture.”  A steadily growing pile of musket crates is just one suggestion of Anderson’s transition from civilian blacksmith to Public Armourer.   

Long time visitors may spot new features in the Armoury yard.  A well and pump, built over archaeological remains of the 18^th century well, is nearly complete.  In the days running up to “Opening Day” it will receive a coat of paint and all necessary hardware.   Across the yard, Colonial Williamsburg’s Masonry Trades team is finishing construction of an outdoor forge just south of the Armoury building (another archaeologically indicated feature), and will be applying additional layers of clay to the bread oven.  As you can see from the images below, the oven currently sports a “scratch coat” consisting of clay, lime, and straw. 

March 31^st promises to be an exciting day, and we hope you’ll join us!  Although the Armoury reconstruction will not be completed until 2013, we have reached an important milestone worth celebrating.  The newly finished and furnished Armoury building and Anderson kitchen will be open for touring with special events and programming between 11a.m. -1 p.m.  The site will remain open beyond 1 p.m. (and for decades to come!) to Colonial Williamsburg ticket holders.  While an in-person visit offers the best view and full effect, the webcams will be stationed to capture the action.  We hope you’ll join us one way or another.  In the meantime, please click on the images below to enlarge the view and whet your appetite. 

Meredith Poole

A coat of cream colored paint is applied to the Armoury's exterior on Monday.

Many of you have watched and wondered about the Armoury’s changing color scheme over recent weeks.  In mid- February, painters applied a coat of yellow paint (below) to the building’s exterior.  Less than a month later, that color was painted over with cream (above).  Call it research in action, but for the record (and as you will soon see), the final paint color on the Armoury is cream.  Because this blog provides a forum for complete transparency about our design and building decisions, we thought we’d explain the process of reaching our color choice.       

Both paint analysis and documentary research on domestic buildings indicate that lead white, the pigment used to make white/cream paint in the 18^th-century, was in short supply during the Revolution.  It was lack of pigment production in the American colonies that led to the shortage.  White lead was particularly time-consuming to produce.  Lead bars were hung over vats of vinegar, or other acidic liquids, for approximately three months.  As the lead corroded, it created lead carbonate (white lead) which had to be scraped off, washed, processed, and then ground into oil for making paint. 

Yellow paint was applied to the Armoury's east (shown here) and north sides in February

Understanding that white lead was in short supply in 1778, researchers initially selected the Armoury’s paint color from the only two color ranges that did not require lead pigment: red/brown and yellow.  The choice was made for yellow.  Colonial Williamsburg’s painters began applying the paint to the north and east sides of the Armoury…. and then new evidence surfaced.

It appears that while the private sector had difficulty obtaining white lead, the state government had a supply of the pigment, and specified its use in repair and construction orders for a number of public buildings.  As the Armoury was built with state funds, this was the most relevant information we have to determine the exterior color of the building.  In an effort to make the Armoury as accurate as possible, the decision was made to use white/cream.

While it may not be the color selected for the Armoury, yellow ochre has been documented in Williamsburg during the 18^th-century.  Using the pigment yellow ochre, a wide range of yellows can be produced.  Today the Blue Bell Tavern, Moir House, Moir Shop, and Bryan House are all painted shades of yellow.  Paint analysis of original pieces of the Coffeehouse showed that the exterior and interior paint was a mixture of yellow ochre and white lead, giving us the tan color you see today.  Even the Robert Carter House, an original gentry house adjacent to the Governor’s Palace, was painted yellow at one point in the 18^th century.

Why such a limited color range for our predecessors?  The colors that are almost always used on exteriors are white/cream, red/brown, yellow, and gray.  These earth pigments are more stable than other pigments, which allows them to hold their color.  Heavier and more durable, earth pigments also provide better protection for the building.  In the last quarter of the 18^th century, if you wanted to paint something blue, you would likely use the pigment Prussian blue to make your paint.  On the interior of your house where the paint was protected, the blue color would remain unchanged for some years.  If you decided you wanted to paint the exterior of your house with this color, the exposure to light and other harsh conditions would change the color to a green and eventually gray.  Color choice was a matter of practicality as well as taste and limited availability.

Contributed by Matthew Webster, Director of Historic Architectural Resources. 

Tim uses an improvised brush to paint between the kitchen and Armoury.

 

Whitewashed walls have brightened the Armoury's interior.

As we begin to set up the Armoury for operation, it is interesting to draw from the existing record a picture of the workmen in the shop between 1778 and 1780.  The makeup of the workforce is rather intriguing.

As you might expect in a large shop, there are journeymen, sometimes called “jobbing smiths”- skilled workmen who do not own shops themselves, but work for wages.  Several are familiar Williamsburg names that show up in other parts of the city and in other documents. There are apprentices, although during the war the apprenticeship system seems to have fallen apart, and young people are employed in the Armoury to do specific work.  James Anderson advertised for “…eight or ten healthy boys as apprentices…” and occasionally refers in the documents to “..apprentices in the shop…”.  Traditionally an apprentice was bound by indenture, but no records of those indentures survive for Armoury apprentices.  Perhaps during the war, indentures were not always formalized. 

Three advertisements placed by Anderson in the Virginia Gazette.

One entry in the Armoury daybook reads:

 Delivered Mr Nuthall, Mr Hubberd, Mr Brooks,
Claiborn Evens, Dick, Peter, Frank Ferguson, Joseph Moody,
Wm Lenox, aprons

While this puts names to the workmen, I believe that you can also infer some personal status in the listing.  Three of the workmen are identified as “Mr.” probably meaning that they were adult journeymen (over 21 years of age) .  Four of the workmen are identified by first and last name, probably indicating that they were minors and likely, apprentices, and two workmen are identified only by a first name, probably indicating that they are skilled slaves.

It is important to note that among the ranks of enslaved workmen, there are individuals who are quite accomplished tradesmen and not simply laborers.  One account entry in particular highlights the value of these skilled slaves to the Armoury:

 John Brooks a Soldier Came to work
August 20th 1779 @12/ pr Day

 Dick, a Negro Blacksmith Came
To Work August 20th @ 20/ pr Day

What this says is that on August 20, 1779, two workmen were added to the shop- one a soldier, and the other a slave.  Comparing the pay rates for the two men, it is noteworthy that the slave’s labor commands a significantly higher rate (20 shillings per day) than his soldier counterpart (12 shillings per day).  My suspicion is that John Brooks is hired to clean guns- a task that should be familiar to every soldier, whereas Dick is a skilled blacksmith.  While Dick, as a skilled smith, may have received benefits that common laboring slaves would not, the cash wages that he earned went to his owner, noted elsewhere in the accounts as Harrison Randolph.  Payment to the owner for the work of a slave is illustrated in a different entry for Natt, another skilled blacksmith:

 To Cash paid Mr Thos Pate for hire of Natt 40/ /

Some of the workmen were specialists hired for particular work.  Among those specialists:

 John Gregory Came to work
Octr 28th 1778 @ 12/ pr Day

While not much is known about John Gregory, an entry in the Williamsburg Public Store accounts reveals his specialty:

 To Sund(ry)s Del(ivered)d John Gregory a File Smith
at work in Mr Anderson’s Shop

John Gregory was a “filesmith”- he manufactured or recut files for use in the Armoury.  Files are an essential finishing tool that, prior to the war, had largely been imported.  With diminished trade during the war limiting availability of files, Anderson hired a workman to supply that essential tool to the shop.

 Also we have this entry, relevant to our upcoming construction at the Armoury site:

 Mr Nathaniel Nuthall Came to work
June 25th 1779 as Tin Man

There may be an additional interesting story about our tinsmith as research continues.  A Nathaniel Nuthall serving in North Carolina was court martialed for some sort of ill behavior in early 1779, a few months before this Nathaniel Nuthall began work at the Armoury.  Is it the same man?  While we are not certain at this point, we don’t see the name Nathaniel Nuthall in the records very often.  We will share more about him should the story get interesting.

We can also identify workmen who show up at the Armoury in groups, and they add an interesting element to our story here.  The accounts reveal that on

 Septr 22 1778
Ten French Men Came to work

Later pay entries refer to the men as “French Gunsmiths”.  Initially I thought that they were armourers from French regiments stationed nearby, but curator Erik Goldstein reminded me that there were not any French regiments in Williamsburg at that particular time.  There is a very fascinating story that is still being pieced together regarding these French men.  More on that later.

And the last group:

 March 15
To 7 Gallons Rum @ 45/ 15.15..0
Issued to the highland Prisoners & others employed in cleaning Arms
From the 22^nd Feb to this date pr the Govrs order

The Governor ordered that Highland Prisoners of War were to receive 7 gallons of rum as a soldier’s ration while they were cleaning arms.  I won’t at this time question the wisdom of placing enemy prisoners of war in a room full of guns with 7 gallons of rum at their disposal, but this does raise some interesting questions.  How does a Scottish Highlander come to America to fight for the British, and end up in an American Armoury, drinking rum and cleaning guns that will be used to defeat the British?  You will have to wait to hear the whole story.

So, standing outside of the Williamsburg Public Armoury in 1779 and listening through the window, you might hear a conversation in Gaelic, French, an African dialect, perhaps a New England accent, and a southern drawl.  You could hear the conversation of young boys, of old men, skilled workman, educated and illiterate workmen, passionate supporter of the cause, drafted soldier, or forced laborer.  In short, this armoury had a lot in common with a twenty-first century workplace- diverse people, with differing skills and interests, varying backgrounds and ambitions, coming together to accomplish their days work.  And important work it was!

-Contributed by Kenneth Schwarz, Master Blacksmith.

Current "roving webcam" view of excavation inside the tin shop.

“Roving webcam” viewers may have noticed that they are no longer in the Armoury building!  On Wednesday morning this movable camera was relocated to focus on new excavation inside the Mary Stith Shop.

As many of you know, archaeologists spent the majority of 2011 trying to determine whether a building that stood in this location served as the Armoury’s tin shop between 1778 and 1780.  We now feel confident that a building in this location did, indeed, house Nathaniel Nuthall and the other Armoury tinsmiths, and we are beginning the process of rebuilding this 1940 reconstruction.

Before the building can be renovated, all remaining archaeological evidence will be recovered, which is what you see archaeologists working on.  Unfortunately, we are not the first to dig here.  In 1932, excavators addressed the same bit of land, hoping to find brick foundations in the narrow trenches dug for that purpose.  We have good images of that activity, as you can see below.  They were successful in their search, and by 1940 the Stith Shop had been rebuilt on the basis of those foundations.  Regrettably (because of the way the site was approached) no one knew how the building was used in the 18^th century…until now.

Archaeologists read history backwards.  We begin at the ground’s surface with evidence of recent events, and work our way back toward evidence of the 18^th century.  This week you have been watching Andy, Mark, and Meredith re-excavating the trenches dug in 1932.  Those trenches look different from the surrounding soil, and must be removed as modern intrusions.  As the weeks progress, you’ll see us working back through successively older phases of the site’s occupation.  By the way, the foundation wall that should be visible on the webcam is a 20^th century structure…perhaps a chicken coop.

The tin shop excavation is the first “indoor archaeology” we have attempted.  The lights are on, as is the heat!  The project will last approximately 5 to 6 weeks, and depending on what we find, we may keep the roving webcam in this location for the duration.  At the very least, we will keep you posted about what we’re finding.   Please ask questions!

1932 trenching in the same area.

Note: It has been brought to our attention (by one webcam watcher who recently visited the tin shop excavation) that the Roving Webcam does not give an accurate sense of  what is happening around the edges of the excavation.  True, we have a sink and a microwave at our disposal, but conditions may not be as swish as that admission might imply!  The images below provide a better sense of how the site is set up.  The second photo shows the location of the webcam on a pole near the left edge of the window frame.  

Mapping the site from within the tin shop.

 Contributed by Meredith Poole, Staff Archaeologist.

Tin shop excavation showing webcam (next to window).

  

Update: February 7th

Excavation inside the tin shop is quickly drawing to a close. In fact, we anticipate that we will be finished by week’s end (Feb 10th). Over the last 5 weeks our digging in this small unit has revealed (sequentially): 1) Colonial Williamsburg’s 1940s reconstruction of the shop, 2) the 1932 search for  this building’s foundation, 3) plow scars from the property’s agricultural use after the Civil War, 4) thick deposits of brick rubble — evidence of the fire that destroyed this building (and most others on the block) in 1842,  5) relatively clean (or artifact-free) layers that accumulated before the original tin shop was built (ca. 1760), and at the bottom, 6) what we call “stable ravine fill”– the natural, loamy accumulation in the bottom of this low-lying gully.  You’ll notice that there was no mention of tin shop activity.  That’s because the building had a wooden floor, allowing no accumulation between 1760 (when the building was constructed) and 1842 (when the building was destroyed).   Although this is a shame, it is what we expected.

This week we have been removing the next-to-earliest layer (see #5, above), representing the first couple of decades of the 18th century. There are very few artifacts in it…mostly animal bone, a few ceramic pieces, and an occasional nail. The image below shows a few of the more interesting finds from a 1 meter square. See if you can identify the pig jaw, tobacco pipe stems, delft (ceramic) fragments, a bit of wine bottle base, and our most unusual find: half of a silver shoe buckle.

A few of the artifacts recovered February 7, 2012.

 February 9th: The tin shop excavation has now been completed.  Because it makes such a nice picture, and because the chapters in a site’s history are rarely so well defined, we’re including a final image showing the tin shop’s stratigraphy. 

North profile of the tin shop excavation.

Listen on this week’s podcast.

Handsplit cypress shingles on the Armoury roof.

The first step is to make 16,000 shingles. We can produce, on average, about 500 shingles a week, so the shingle production began back in March of this year and continued right up until the time of the roof installation. The cypress logs from which shingles were cut came from Surry County, just across the James River from Jamestown.  Cypress is a local wood, readily available in Tidewater Virginia.  The 18^th-century builders of the Armoury simply bought a load of shingles and had them delivered to the site.  Shingle-making was a big business in colonial times and roof shingles were bought and sold as a commodity just like scantlings and planks and iron and bricks.  We, on the other hand, made our shingles at Colonial Williamsburg as part of the interpretive program.

Groove cut into chimney for flashing.

Shingled roofs are very effective at shedding water… until you cut a hole into them and run up a chimney. Then things become more complicated. We solve the water problem around a chimney by cutting a groove all the way around the brick chimney.

Sheet lead counterflashing set into groove.

Then sheet lead is set around the chimney and hammered into the groove to seal the water out of the joint.

Lead cover for cricket.

 Finally we build a little roof just uphill of the chimney, called a cricket or a saddle, to divert the water around the funnel of the chimney instead of letting it run down the roof right into the stack. We covered the small crickets above the forge chimneys with more sheet lead.

Finished cricket on forge chimney.

 And we continue to run the courses of shingles up to the roof peak. It requires about 250 shingles to run one course 68 feet long (the length of the Armoury building).

Woven shingle cricket valley.

An enormous cricket was built between the Armourer’s Shop roof and the Armoury Kitchen chimney. We shingled the larger cricket roof, and wove the shingles into the valleys of the cricket.  Finally, lead flashing was set into the brickwork of the kitchen chimney.

View of large cricket and flashing.

In weaving the valley, each shingle was custom fit, wider at the top, tapering down almost to a point.  The edges of the shingles were then angled to fit. It took about ten days to shingle the cricket, but the results are spectacular.

Armoury roof ridge with crickets.

We may be a little biased, but we think it is one of the prettiest roofs in the Historic Area!

Contributed by Garland Wood,  Master Carpenter.

The Tin Shop and Diagonal Fence at Anderson's Armoury.

Last week Colonial Williamsburg publically announced that the Tin Shop would be rebuilt as part of the Public Armoury complex. This is very good news, indeed, and we are grateful to Forrest Mars for extending his interest and financial support to include the new building.

The initial plan for the Armoury envisioned construction of five buildings on the Anderson property: a kitchen, blacksmith shop, tinsmith and two storage buildings. Collectively, these buildings functioned as the 1778-1780 Armoury. This summer’s continuing archaeological exploration revealed convincing evidence that the Armoury’s primary tin shop was located a few feet to the west of the Armoury, on a lot that we attribute, in the 21st century, to Mary Stith (Stith did not purchase the lot until 1785). Accordingly, plans have been modified to incorporate this new understanding of the broader Armoury complex by rebuilding the Tin Shop on the adjoining property, recreating the broad scope of work and diverse workshops at the site. The shop previously identified as the site of tinwork will be reconstructed as a general workshop for gun cleaning, gun stocking, leather and canvas work, file-making, and button-making.

What sort of evidence confirmed the presence of the Tin Shop? If you have been following the blog, you have caught bits and snatches of the archaeological case. First, there was documentary evidence. In 1813, Mary Stith penned a will in which she mentions “my house in the yard called the tin shop.” Her reference makes it clear that, while formerly a tin shop, the building is (in 1813) used as a house. The question then became how to link the building (which was reconstructed in 1940 on archaeological foundations) both in time and space to the Armoury. Put more simply, the questions were: “When was it a tin shop?” And “Was there a connection between the two properties.”

Crucible found at the Armoury.

The physical connection between the lots became evident this spring when archaeologists began to uncover a line of fence post holes running diagonally from the northwest corner of the “Stith shop” to the south east corner of a building on the street (see image above). The apparent function of this fence was to gather up a single building, the “Stith shop,” and incorporate it into the Armoury’s secure core.  This fence was built just as construction began on the Armoury complex, and was removed soon after the Armoury was abandoned in 1780.

On the east, or “Armoury,” side of this fence was a great deal of Armoury trash: coal and clinker (the waste product from spent coal), gun parts, gun flints, a couple of bayonet scabbard tips, button blanks (flat animal bone from which bone buttons were drilled), and the remains of meals served to 40 Armoury workers over the course of 2 years. There was also clear evidence of metal-working: scraps of sheet copper, brass, and a large crucible which contained copper, zinc, and lead (according to XRF, or x-ray fluorescence, analysis).

Tinned iron scrap from the Armoury.

And, yes, there were scraps of tinned iron… unassuming, triangular fragments clipped from rectangular tinplate sheets as they were fashioned into various forms: camp-kettles, coffeepots, cartridge boxes, lanterns, mugs, plates, and speaking trumpets. Although they would not make for an attention-grabbing museum display, these tinned iron fragments were just the evidence archaeologists hoped to find.

In upcoming months there will some additional activity on the Tin Shop site as work to replace the building commences. Archaeological excavation under the shop floor will determine whether there is any remaining evidence to be examined before the foundations are altered. Architectural historians and digital modelers are already well through the process of conceptualizing the reconstructed tin shop.

Current plans call for construction of the Tin Shop to follow completion of two key buildings of the industrial complex, the kitchen and main Armoury building, both of which will open to the public in the spring of 2012. The Armoury’s Tin Shop will be the only reconstructed and operational eighteenth century tinsmithing operation in the United States. What an exciting prospect for beginning the new year!

Contributed by Kenneth Schwarz, Master Blacksmith, and Meredith Poole, Staff Archaeologist.