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Digging in at New Philadelphia

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View of the New Philadelphia Site from Block 3, Lot 4, looking to the southeast. The old buildings in the left background were salvaged and moved to the site during the middle 1990s in order to protect the original surviving building foundations and to provide an impression of how New Philadelphia might have formerly appeared.
All photos Courtesy of the Illinois State Museum

By Michele Steinbacher

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When archaeologist Terrance Martin arrived in Pike County this past summer to excavate 42-acres once known as New Philadelphia the first U.S. town founded by an African-American his first concerns were below the surface.

"We wanted to know: I lad a century of farming the land that formerly made up the town destroyed the integrity of the site?" recalled Martin, curator and chair of anthropology at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield.

Establishing the national significance of the integrated frontier town, founded by former slave Francis "Free Frank" McWorter, depends on what lies beneath the Pike County soil.

A 2002-2003 walk-over survey of the site yielded 7,073 artifacts and identified several concentrations of artifact groupings. But despite finding a variety of ceramics, glass, and other signs of New Philadelphia's material culture dating back to 1840, the context of the town was missing. All that was left were a tew foundations, a gravel road, and a sign marking the site of the historic town.

"We worried about whether the archaeological record still would be intact," Martin told Illinois Heritage in a recent interview. "Otherwise all you have are some pretty objects," he said.

Excavations this summer revealed that the archaeological record of the town had not been disturbed. According to Paul Shackel, one of the project's leaders who also heads the Center for I Ieritage Studies at University of Maryland, intact features such as house foundations and cellar pits have given researchers enough material to begin comparative analysis of lots.

"The first season was very successful," said Martin. One of the project's goals to demonstrate the site's eligibility for the National Register ot Historic Places depended upon finding such an intact record, he said. Researchers will learn in the spring of 2005 if the nomination is approved, said Martin.

Not all African Americans lived on plantations before and after the Civil War. Many helped establish towns, start businesses, and build communities. New Philadelphia's story is part of the westward migration of African Americans, observed Shackel. "The town needs to become part of the national public memory."

Archaeologists look for clues to life in America's first planned African-American town

Free Frank, a black pioneer
Frank McWorter, born a slave in 1777, bought his and his wife's freedom with money he earned from hiring himself out and working in a saltpeter mine. McWorter eventually purchased the freedom of more than a dozen relatives and formally changed his name to "Free Frank."

Historian Juliet E.K. Walker, Free Frank's great-great-granddaughter, shared the story of McWorter's extraordinary life in her 1983 book Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier. According to Walker, in 1836 McWorter purchased a 42-acre block of wilderness in Hadley Township, where he platted, subdivided, and sold 144, 60-by-120-foot lots in the town he called New Philadelphia, which lies about 20 miles east of the Mississippi River, The town's population grew slowly but steadily, reaching about 170 residents in the late 1860s.

Each lot sold several times over to both whites and blacks, said archaeologist Shackel, but not every lot was settled. Shackel and other scholars theorize that some lot purchases were by speculators hoping to profit from a future railroad, he said.

It never came. In 1869 the railroad rolled through the county but bypassed New Philadelphia. The half-mile difference meant the end of Free Franks town for all practical purposes. By 1885 the frontier crossroads town had become unincorporated. Researchers don't know why the railroad line was built to benefit nearby Barry rather than New Philadelphia. Was the terrain better or was the decision political? "That's the smoke-filled room," Martin says.

State representatives from Bam; Pittsfield, and Griggsville took part in

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the decision to reroute the train, but no one from New Philadelphia sat on that committee, said Shackel. "Why was New Philadelphia not there? We don't know," said Shackel.

The railroad's location meant the demise of the town, but the people of Pike County, and many descendants of Free Frank keep its memory alive. Juliet Walker formed The Free Frank Historic Preservation Foundation shortly after her book was published. Then she successfully lobbied for Free Frank's gravesite to be added to the National Register.

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Site personnel for the 2004 field season at the New Philadelphia Site.

Archaeologists Martin and Shackel say they and others involved in the excavations at New Philadelphia credit Walker's book as a key source in their research, but they insist the story of New Philadelphia only begins with Free Frank; they are adamant that the story should include the details of the racially integrated community.

"We're not setting out any preconceived ideas that this was the promised land, that there was never any strife. That would be naive," said Martin. Instead the research team is exploring the site from the archaeological point of view. "We're looking at the house lots, comparing one to another," he said. "Who are the people who lived in New Philadelphia? What did they do?"

After five weeks of excavation this summer, Martin, Shackel, and others say they've only just begun to learn those answers. With 144 lots to explore, the summer archaeology concentrated on only 3. Samples of more lots will be explored during the next two summers, Martin said.

New Philadelphia Project
In 1996, a group of Pike County residents interested in preserving the site of the 19th-Century town, formed the New Philadelphia Association. A few years later, the non-for-profit sought the help of University of Illinois at Springfield faculty to help determine the best way to preserve the town's site.

Former UIS professor Vibert White, now at the University of Central Florida, called on African-American historical archaeology expert Shackel, Illinois State Museum staff, representatives from the Illinois Underground Railroad Association, and the National Park Service, and others, to discuss the possibilities.

What emerged was the New Philadelphia Project a collaborative effort between several universities, the state museum, and the Pike County group.

"The goal is to demonstrate how an integrated community existed on the western frontier and to show how it changed as social and economic conditions changed in west central Illinois," said Martin, whose work in early settlement archaeology includes excavations at Fort de Chartres in southern Illinois.

The New Philadelphia Project also aims to preserve the land and to "tell the story about people who don't have anyone telling their story," said Shackel, whose expertise in the African-American settlement practices includes excavations at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and southern plantations.

A third project leader, University of Illinois at Urbana's Chris Fennell, spent time excavating at Jamestown, Virginia. The three men supervise a field school supported by a three-year $226,000 National Science Foundation grant for the Research Education for Undergraduates (NSF-REU).

The grant targets students at historically black or small colleges who might not have had an opportunity to learn directly from on-site archaeological research, said Martin. The nine student awards for 2004 went to a group of undergraduates including students from Tuskeegee University in Alabama and Lane College in Tennessee, an Objibwe student from Minnesota's St. Cloud State University, and a Latino student from the University of Texas at El Paso.

The 2002-03 walkover survey was completed over several weekends. The project showed researchers areas of high artifact concentration near the north central part of the town. Shortly before the field school began in June, researchers used advanced geophysical survey equipment to pinpoint subsurface architectural features. Targeting the north end of town near the dense collection areas, researchers found such features as foundations, a cellar, a refuse pit, and a lime-mixing pit possibly used during construction.

During the five-week excavation, the scientists and several graduate students led the field school excavations on three lots. An additional five weeks were spent cataloging and analyzing the dig's yield back in Springfield.

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One fruitful discovery this past summer was the foundation of what researchers believe was the cellar of William Butler's home. Butler worked for one of Free Frank's sons, Solomon McWorter. According to Martin, the Butler lot yielded a variety of samples of glass, stoneware crocks, whitewares porcelains, and terra-cotta smoking pipes. Such artifacts reveal what was manufactured in New Philadelphia crudely made bricks, for example and what was traded or brought in from the East. One glass piece features a scroll design the archaeologists believe comes from a Louisville, Kentucky, company.

"We have a stereotype of the frontier begin isolated, but that's not exactly true," Martin noted.

The quantity of commercially made thimbles, buttons, and toys found in the Butler cellar reveals how much the community was a part of mainstream American culture.

Ron Carter, a 71-year-old retired Springfield police officer, sits on the board of the New Philadelphia Association. His aunt, Irene Butler Brown, was the daughter of William Butler.

"Free Frank is historically significant to do this [establish an African-American town 25 years before the Civil War, that's impressive," he said. Butler, an African American, had a white wife, but Carter noted that while multi-racial households in New Philadelphia are interesting, they are not that surprising. "I imagine during frontier times you had to band together," he said.

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Miniature pewter tableware recovered from the excavation of a dense refuse deposit associated with the Butler household in at New Philadelphia.

A "dream project"
According to the State Museum's Martin, the summer excavation produced nearly 1,000 animal bones. Such faunal remains help scientists understand the diet of the town's residents. Animal remains of pigs, chickens, squirrels, rabbits, and catfish and Buffalo fish reveal that the residents of the Butler household ate an upland South diet typically found throughout Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.

Martin calls the work at New Philadelphia a "dream project." "The nature of the site, the historical materials available, and the archaeological integrity of the site' are remarkable," he says, "and some of the descendants are alive."

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Dr. Terrance Martin (left) mentors (left to right) Richard Fairley (Lane College in Tennessee), Laura Wardwell (Hannibal-La Grange) and janel Vassalo (University of Central Florida) as they identify animal remains from the site at the Illinois State Museum's Research and Collections Center.

In October, several fifth-generation McWorter descendants some traveling from Texas, Ohio, and California among other states visited the site and examined some of the artifacts while in the area for Barry's annual apple festival. Ron Carter also was in Barry that weekend, and met some descendants of his great uncle's neighbors.

"I had a photograph from my aunt's things," Carter said, "and Lonie Vond-Wilson (nee McWorter) knew all the people in the picture. It was amazing."

Eventually, archaeologists and historians would like to see an interpretive center at the site, said Shackel, but for now the focus remains on next summer. "We'll increase the sample six and expand on what we know," he said. In particular, Shackel looks forward to digging deeper into a cellar where artifacts dating back to the 1850s were found just below the soil. "It's got to be one of the earliest structures there," he said.

Despite their excitement, the archaeologists are not in a hurry to get things done. "We're taking it slow and deliberate," said Terrance Martin. "We plowed and disked some 27 acres, but the remainder has been left intact."

Michelle Steinbacher of Normal is a reporter for The [Bloowington] Pantagraph and a new contributor to Illinois Heritage.

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