Bones, bottles and bears! Oh my!
By Marcy McCann
Strasburg — Since discovering that the old white building that I bought in 2003 was actually an 1820 Brick Federal, the thought of excavating has been high on my priority list. Not as high as was making it habitable and comfortable of course, but still pretty darn high.
Ron Anderson shown, removing the first layer of our archaeological adventure.
I searched for help online and through friends, but always came up short. I learned there are so many pre-Civil War homes in this part of Virginia that my fascination for finding the well and privies was not shared with the same enthusiasm. Several friends offered to help, but with conflicting schedules and busy lives, we never managed to come together. Local historians showed minimal interest, educators listened to my requests for help, a friend came along with a metal detector only to find “too much surface debris to tell anything,” and email exchanges from privy diggers in Roanoke sat waiting for response in my email Inbox. Life took turns, things got busy, priorities changed—but I always toyed with the idea of the “big find.”
Rosalie Cash, then 93 years old, told me that as a child she lived across the street and her friend lived in my (Eberly) home. There was a livery stable in the back yard, and the horses and carriages were used to transport people to the local hotels and train station. She recalled that the ground floor was higher and was only lowered to the street level in about 1931 when the home was changed into a store with an apartment overhead.
Shortly thereafter, I met a man at Strasburg Christian Church whose parents were the ones who purchased the building in 1931 from the U.S. Government. It was under a program designed to move the nation from the Depression that allowed the structure to be modified to accommodate a business and living quarters in the same building. He felt strongly that some of the modifications were unnecessary, like removing log beams and replacing them with more modern roof timbers. He told me that there was no fireplace in the summer kitchen in 1931, so it must have been bricked in long before that.
The guys at Palmer’s Garage told me they remembered the well at the end of our driveway that empties onto Washington Street. Now lost in a clump of volunteer trees and shrubs, that same well probably held a treasure trove. Each time I passed it, my mind would dance with thoughts of hacking, pruning and excavating; but alas, it was not on our property.
When we had our split rail fence installed, the auger pulled up bricks and limestone at every single hole. How could this be? Were there barns? Was the driveway and alley paved? We are talking a 200-foot run of land here. Each time something worked its way out of the earth, I felt more compelled to find the privy or the well. But again, it had to be put on the back burner for more important daily activities – like making a living.
In early July, I noticed a 3-inch hole where there had been some roots and a tiny hole before. I didn’t think anything of it at first, and being more concerned with someone getting a heel caught in it, I placed one of my other half’s large orange safety cones over it. And there it sat for a couple of weeks until while mowing, Ron moved the cone off the lawn. I, of course, noticed this safety violation and moved the cone back over to the hole.
The hole! The hole was now a bit larger and was obviously deeper. There was a brick next to the hole so I removed the dirt just for the fun of it. Wallah! Another brick, and another. Clearly, I was onto something. So with pick in hand, I began to expose the eastern one-third of a circular pattern. This was exciting. Whatever it was had been covered for a hundred years. Rock hard dirt had to be chiseled away with the mattock end of the pick and I was getting tired.
Ron was busy in the back half of the yard moving piles of dirt to level the yard. Unbeknown to him, I was creating more piles within 10 feet of the house. When he saw my excavation project, the look on his face was utter, “What the?” Of course, in short order he was into it, and suggested that I wait until the morning when the shade was on that side of the house.
The next morning before church, I was out there again. With the full circle of bricks exposed and a hole running about 2 feet deep to the east, I had finally found something to dig. Now, I needed help. Was this the well, or the cistern maybe? Ron was now locked into my project. Shovel in hand, he began to dig and soon began to find remnants of objects dating back to before the 1900s.
Robert has a furniture restoration shop next door; he and his wife own the big yellow house across from the Old Mill on Route 11. As he passed by, I flagged him down to show him our exciting find. Robert’s home dates back to the 1700s and contains a glass-topped limestone lined well in the cellar and a cistern, too. This was clearly a cistern he explained. We had already determined that it was constructed of brick and lined with cement. The upper ring of half bricks that lain in four rows had broken loose. These courses were used to narrow the opening as the tank itself was about 6 feet across.
Keith, a brick mason and good family friend, was on hand, as we continued to dig. He said that rebuilding the upper rings “would be a piece of cake.” So,we loosened and removed those to expose the tank. Carefully, Ron excavated layers of dirt and ash. He began to uncover old bottles, one from the King Cola plant in Edinburg, rusty metal objects, plate glass and bones. Bones cut in different lengths. Big bones—not from a store, but bones of a large animal buried in layers of ash. And then… a bear claw. A bear claw! Sure enough it was.
I carried our booty to the table and cleaned the lot with a mist of water. One half of a ceramic cleat used to separate electrical wires, old metal cans, broken crocks, and a couple of broken tooth brushes were among the lot. We had clearly found a treasure trove that would lead us to know more about the Eberly’s and how they lived.
Several years ago by doing research at the Shenandoah County Court House and library, I found that the Eberly’s purchased the land from the Funks in 1816. The home was completed about 1820. The summer kitchen and main house were joined together to form a multi level L-shaped house with guttering running in several directions. It entered the ground in two locations, one being at the driveway corner where we found this hole and one at the end of the smoke house attached to the summer kitchen.
Bones and bottles found in the Eberly cistern.
Several days later, I uncovered more bottles, the other half of the ceramic cleat and what appears from Internet searches to be the jaw bone of a small bear. We are only about 2 feet down so, who knows what we will find?
We will keep you informed as we dig and restore this great piece of Strasburg history. We are located at 234 West King Street, now the home of LtdPrints.com (a custom mural and cool online poster shop) and 7Bends.com.