Some Post Excavation Thoughts: Snowdon Vulcan Iron and Machine Works

Hello Everyone, 

        Things have been busy for me this past month, so I haven't had time for an update. The John Snowdon and Son's Vulcan Iron and Machine Works excavations in Brownsville, Pennsylvania have come to a close for this field season. I cannot thank the volunteers enough and the students from the WVU Field School who came out to pick through some of the toughest fill material I have ever encountered. We have recovered an incredible amount of data dating back to the turn of the 20th-century. Personal items, industrial artifacts, and a variety of little unidentified items that will keep us busy for a long time. However, we also have the most important artifact, the foundry itself, a mausoleum to 19th-century industrialization in the Monongahela River Valley. It is my estimate that we have excavated 5% of the total structure. We haven't even begun to excavate within its interior except along the foundation walls. 

      In the first three photographs show an air pocket that we hit during excavation. Within it are the remains of a barrel laying on its side. The strapping is just visible to the left of that concrete floor joist support. When the building was demolished by the railroad, the area next to that floor joist created an air gap with brick from an interior wall. No artifacts were found with the barrel that would indicate its contents. the final picture is Erin who came out do some mapping of our foundations!   

Air gap with barrel strapping.

Close-up of the barrel remains.

The Completed excavation unit with exterior wall to south. Barrel removed.

Erin field mapping in the shade!

Snowdon Foundry: Influencing the Younger Generation to Archaeology.

Hello all,

Zander Harden

 This is a mini post showcasing two of our younger members in the SPA Mon-Yough Chapter #3 who come out to volunteer. We hope that their exposure to archaeology and historic preservation will make them better stewards of our town's history. Because the excavations are public, we encourage children and young adults to come out and get a taste of discovery first hand. As archaeologists, sometimes we become desensitized to history, we ourselves begin to take it for granted. However, for the people, the stakeholders of the communities in which we live, us archaeologists are a bridge into their past. To many people, this bridge to the past is shrouded in a fog of misunderstandings, misconceptions, and often misguidance. We must reach out to the public for interpretation and acceptance of their past, no matter how harsh or contested. It is our job to hold the public's hand and guide them through the fog into a knowledgeable and tangible past. That is what sets us apart from historians, people can actually take the past into their own hands and ponder the artifacts and perhaps make a connection with those who created and used them. Children and young adults are the future consumers of heritage, if we don't educate them on what is valuable then we'll have many many more Rick Savages using a backhoe for a quick buck. Yet if we, the experts, teach the children of our community the societal and cultural value of archaeology and preservation, then perhaps we have justified our existence.  

Chaze Eddings

Chaze Working on Straitening those Walls!

Zander and Carl Exploring the North Foundation of SVIMW

Zander checking out his work.

I found Something!

Julz and Chaze cleaning out the South Excavation Block.

Archaeologist laments razing of house in Brownsville - heraldstandard.com: Local News

A nice little article based on my rant here on this blog.

Archaeologist laments razing of house in Brownsville - heraldstandard.com: Local News

Related articles

• I'm tired of teaching what was here...

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I'm tired of teaching what was here...

Hello Everyone,

This little post comes after some feedback on my Facebook page. I thought it was appropriate so I'll post it here as well. The discussion started as several of our historic buildings here in Brownsville, Pennsylvania are being threatened. Not threatened by developer or the state; no they are threatened by the people we elect into our local government.

You expect that the people we elect to be the stewards of our town, they would protect that which is valuable to its community and preserve the fabric of our heritage. Instead, to your face they speak of valuing the core of the community but in their seats of power they tear the very fabric down. Instead of preserving and look to the future they are blind to the past, only because they do not understand that the wealthiest of communities have embraced their heritage and profited from it.

Two million dollars were allocated to Brownsville. I heard two million reasons to tear it down, and not a single reason to preserve it. These politicians want to rule over a community of rubble. In one instance a comment was made on Facebook over the destruction of the Mitchell House by a senior member of the Brownsville Council, "Tear it down!". How can we move forward as a community when those elected prefer a wrecking ball over using their head to move the community forward? I cannot take a stand alone, the culture of the community must change. I'm tired of teaching about what was there; it would be nice to teach about how we saved the town.

http://www.archaeologydude.com/2009/10/current-side-quest.html

Photo courtesy of Phillip Shandorf

Mitchell House. Photo courtesy of the Brownsville Telegraph Online. 

Snowdon Vulcan Iron and Machine Works Discovery!

Hello Everyone,

        I would like to take a few moments and present an important discovery in American Industrial Archaeology. Myself, along with members of the local Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology Mon-Yough Chapter #3 have located and begun excavation on the Snowdon Vulcan Iron and Machine Works located right here in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. As you read on, you will notice reference to the nation's first cast iron bridge, a symbol which will become the cornerstone to Brownsville's redevelopment in the 21st-century.

1886 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map showing the Foundry

Aerial Photograph with Foundry Overlay 

     The turn of the 19^th century and the introduction of steam power ushered in a new industrial rush in Brownsville and Bridgeport, Pennsylvania.  In 1818, John Snowden arrived in Brownsville from Yorkshire, England (Ellis 1882; Gresham and Wiley 1889).  After apprenticing for a few years in a local foundry, he opened his own machine shop and rolling mill within close proximity to the riverbank.  Named after the Roman god of fire, the Vulcan Iron and Machine Works opened in 1824.  The Vulcan factory built the engines for the steamer Monongahela in 1827.  Snowden improved and extended the factory in 1831. In 1853, the establishment burned down and was subsequently rebuilt.  The business renovated to include a forge, rolling mill, pattern shop, foundry, boiler yard, and finishing shop all located on an acre of land on the bank of the Monongahela River (Kussart 1930; Thurston 1859).  The main two-story buildings were made of brick and faced the river.  The purpose of this main building was the finishing shop where parts were completed.  An excerpt from Thurston’s (1859:34) town directory describes in detail the factory:

"Within its walls and distributed over the use of two rooms, with nice regard to their convenient use, is gathered a large amount of machinery, of the latest improvements, adapted to all the requirements of machine manufacturing; among them are 19 turning lathes, 6 planning machines, 4 boring machines and 8 drill presses.  There upon the lower floor, 10 blacksmith fires, with all of their accompanying cranes, steam forge hammers, and etc.

     The foundry and finishing shops were constructed of brick and connected with the main building.  This area contained cranes and two large 12-ton capacity cupolas for delivering molten iron.  The foundry was in the forefront of the rolling mill and the forge was contained in another one story building.  Within this structure were six pairs of rolls, two puddling furnaces, two heating furnaces, one spike and one rivet machine that turned out 600 tons of bar iron a year (Thurston 1859).  A pattern shop used for cutting different shapes of metal adjoined the foundry."

     The Vulcan Iron and Machine Works, later called Snowden & Sons, employed 110 people with a weekly wage of $6.83 per person (Thurston 1859).  This factory produced a similar number of land use stationary steam engines such as those used to power the large belts of the machine shop.  The convenient location of the factory next to the Brownsville wharf allowed engines to be fitted to hulls while incoming boats unloaded goods. In 1863 the Vulcan Iron and Machine Works built the engines and boilers of the ironclads Manayunk and Umpqua.

1901. Photo Courtesy of  Donna Edwards-Jordan

     John Herbertson arrived

 in Brownsville in 1829 after learning the trade of steam engine building in Pittsburgh.  Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, Herbertson became a foreman in the Vulcan 

Iron and Machine Works engine shop.  When the wooden bridge 

collapsed over Dunlap’s Creek connecting Brownsville to 

Bridgeport, Snowden took the contract for the erection of a cast 

iron bridge (Ellis 1882; Kussart 1930; Thurston 1859).  This is  the 

first cast iron bridge in the United States.  Herbertson designed the 

bridge and supervised its construction (Gresham and Wiley 1889).  

A teaser image from some preliminary testing.

Herbertson eventually went into a partnership with Thomas Faull who was already operating a small foundry in Bridgeport.  Together they formed the Fayette Foundry, until 1842 when Faull withdrew from the partnership (Ellis 1882).  Herbertson later created Herbertson & Company with his sons in the 1880s as the business grew.

There will be more to follow as this project moves forward. Stay tuned! 

Text taken from:

Henshaw, Marc

2004  THE STEAMBOAT INDUSTRY IN BROWNSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA: AN ETHNOHISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE ECONOMIC CHANGE IN THE MONONGAHELA VALLEY.

References:

Ellis, Franklin

1882  History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men.

Gresham, John and Samuel T. Wiley

1889  Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Fayette County, Pennsylvania. John M. Gresham, Maging Editor.

Kussart, Sarepta Cooper

1930 Navigation on the Monongahela River. Unpublished Manuscript.

Thurston, Geo. H.

1859  The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania Then and Now.

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• First Cast Iron Bridge in the United States
• Brownsville Redevelopment
• A Structure Forgotten: The First Cast Iron Bridge in the United States

Weekend Archaeology Pics

It's the weekend so I thought I'd share a picture or two from a site I worked on in Southwestern Pennsylvania. 

     

     The first photo is of the field crew troweling down the floor of the main excavation block in order to get a "clean" surface examine for any possible prehistoric features. The archaeologist's trowel is sharpened, like a knife, in order to cut the soil. If it were dull, the delicate soil layers would smear together. 

     I have always valued the connection between archaeology and the community, and here we have two volunteers Ken Gayman and Carl Maurer. Both of these gentlemen are members of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, Mon/Yough Chapter #3. Ken is clearing soil from around a stump's roots, before it can be removed. Carl is screening for artifacts.   

     In this photograph you can see two more members of the Mon/Yough Chapter #3 analyzing artifacts in our lab located in the Monongahela River, Railroad, and Steam Museum in Brownsville, PA. Don Rados and Jim Barno are analyzing each individual flake from the site above. We recovered more that 8,000 Native American artifacts and flakes from their tool production. 

Archaeology and Gas Well Drilling: A Discussion

I thought I would write a small commentary on the interview I had with the Observer-Reporter from the last post. Hopefully this will clear a few things up about how archaeological sites are impacted by drilling for natural gas. This will also serve as a rebuttal to Robert McHale of Mark West Liberty Midstream & Resources. So let's get through this complicated mess that has become of archaeology in Pennsylvania.

Image via Wikipedia

Extent of Marellus Shale Gas USGS

Let me add a disclaimer to start. I am NOT OPPOSED to gas well drilling! We need the energy her in the United States, and it's always better if we use our own resources than take it from someone else. What I am concerned with, is the lack of Phase I archaeological surveys for these Marcellus Shale gas extraction sites.

Normally when a company wants to build something, such as a cell phone tower or highway, where state of federal monies are being used, it trips Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.This is part of their permitting process. An archaeological survey must be done to look for sites that are unknown or possibly known about. We do this by using a map with the area that will be impacted, and dig test holes screening all of the material in an ordered grid like pattern. If we find a site, depending on its size or historical significance, the project can be moved away from it, or further archaeological testing must be done. I have worked surveying cell phone towers that are 100 feet by 100 feet, very small in comparison to the acres of disturbance a gas well can cause.

Unfortunately in Pennsylvania, the permits are funneled through the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) who for some reason, sees only the size of the well head which is 1 meter by 1 meter in size. They ignore the acres upon acres that are destroyed by access roads, sediment ponds, and the preparation of the enormous well pads!

To read that Robert McHale would say that they “pick a clear spot” and go. A clear spot, in a farmers field, over looking a stream? A perfect spot for a Native American village or camp? Mr. McHale would like the readers to believe that they have access to all of the databases that the state has, and they probably do, but what about the sites not on the map? Section 106 is about finding the unrecorded sites, the sites that lay buried just beneath the soil. There are burials out there, children and infants. Their bones scattered by the bulldozer because these people think that they have the answers. I am constantly surprised by the lack of intervention by Native Americans in this situation that Pennsylvania has found itself in.

Archaeological sites and data cannot be put back into place. If the law is good enough for a company building a cell phone tower or coal mine, it should be good enough for a resource extraction company. It is estimated that 44,000 wells will be drilled in Pennsylvania alone, that 44,000 archaeological sites impacted if we don't find them and work with the companies to protect them.

Joanna Furnace

      In April, the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology’s annual conference was held in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. The John Shrader Chapter 21 of the SPA was kind enough to host the conference in their neck of Pennsylvania, namely Berks County. The John Shrader Chapter has an interesting project on their hands, namely the remains of the Joanna iron furnace. I toured this extremely well-preserved industrial site that represents Pennsylvania's early foray into iron smelting.

     Started by Samuel Potts, Thomas Rutter III, Thomas May, and Thomas Bull in 1791, the furnace stands as a monument to early iron smelters capitalizing on Pennsylvania's wealth of natural resources. Local iron was plentiful, as were the necessary trees to turn into charcoal in order to fuel the blast. Until the 1850's, Joanna was a cold blast, single stack, furnace powered by water supplied by Hay Creek. The conversion to steam power boosted efficiency and untethered the furnace operation from the whims of the naturally flowing creek.

     

     I was luck enough to meet Richard Nearhood and Charles Jacob of the John Shrader Chapter to give me an extensive tour of the ironworks. As an industrial archaeologist, the furnace represents more than the sum of its physical parts. Questions arose that are sometimes hard to answer when first visiting a site. Where did the workers come from? Where did they live? What was the relationship with this furnace operation with others in the area? How did this industry fit into a wider distribution network of colliers, furnaces, canals, and railroads? From the beginning of Joanna Furnace in 1791 until the 1840's, Pennsylvania was providing for the basic needs of those pushing westward and the newly formed middle classes emerging from industrialization. It is then no wonder that the furnace was producing nails, stoves, farm implements, and a variety of cast iron products to supply the growing demand of a moving population. A moving population not only physically, but socioeconomically as well.

     
     I have here a variety of pictures that I took while on my tour, so that you my readers can experience this beautifully preserved artifact from a little studied industry.

Archaeology Update

Enterprise 1815

Hello everyone,


         It has been awhile and there is much I want to update all of you on. First, the Monongahela Oral History project is still under full steam. A total of 10 riverworkers, from steamboat captains to deckhands, and even cook have been interviewed! I am always looking for more workers who toiled on the Monongahela River during the age of the steamboat to interview, so let me know if you know of anyone. This oral history project is trying to capture a snapshot of a grossly overlooked period in industrialization and labor in the US, from an often overlooked area, the Mon Valley of Pennsylvania.
     The second project is:

    Brownsville Archaeology Month

May 9-27^th, 2011 9am-4pm

Location: Intersection of Bank St. & Prospect St.

     This is the first year for archaeological excavations showcasing the hidden history of Brownsville, Pennsylvania. At one time, this small town was positioned at the very edge of the western frontier, as an endpoint of the National Road. To the west, its only barrier to an unknown land was the northward flowing Monongahela River.

     In 1814 a revolution in transportation took place on the banks of the Monongahela River at Brownsville. The Enterprise, the first steamboat to travel from Brownsville to New Orleans and back under its own power proved that river transportation was a viable alternative to the often dangerous, muddy, and perilous overland roads most people traveled on.

     The Enterprise ushered in a period of steamboat building at Brownsville throughout the 19^th century, with Brownsville producing well over 850 boats that traveled up and down the nation's river systems. Brownsville developed a complex system of foundries, engine shops, lumber yards, and boat yards to support the increasing amounts of people, emigrants, goods, and supplies traveling to the newly opened western frontier. During Brownsville Archaeology Month, we hope to uncover a window into this hidden past that lies in plain sight. A crumbling foundation here, and abandoned building there, and a sense that something greater happened in this place we call our community.

      Brownsville Archaeology Month's main focus this year is on the riverworkers, those men and women, white and black who made it their job to transport people and cargo to the many rivertowns in this area and westward. Our focus is a house once owned by a steamboat captain, Captain James Gormley who piloted the Jesse R. Bell in the late 1850's. There is little information on him, but it is our goal as archaeologists to piece together the puzzle of his life.

      The event is open to everyone, anyone who wants to volunteer on the excavation is only required to send an email to Marc Henhaw at marc_henshaw@hotmail.com. The Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology Mon/Yough Chapter #3; the Brownsville Area Revitalization Corporation, Nemacolin Archaeological Services, California University of Pennsylvania, and the Monongahela River, Railroad, and Transportation Museum are sponsoring this event. We hope to bring in K-12^th grades from local schools, local organizations, and the general population to learn about Brownsville's once thriving industrial past. Come join us! RSVP by April 29^th, 2011.

Marc Henshaw AKA Archeology Dude

marc_henshaw@hotmail.com

Come and join us for some fun in the dirt!

Image via Wikipedia

Hi All!

Well summer is almost officially here, and I have been hard at work. I've two major projects going on right now. The first is a phase III excavation of a prehistoric resource processing site in southwestern Pennsylvania. This site was used to gather and roast tree nuts for consumption. The major indicator of this activity is in the dozen or so "nutting stones" or pecked stone tools found throughout the excavated portion of the site. My second project is my dissertation. So far I have collected one oral history from a gentleman who worked and toiled on the Monongahela River as a deckhand on a variety of steamboats. I however need more people to interview. I'm looking for 20 individuals who worked on the steamboats until their eventual phasing out in the late 1950's early 1960's. I want to capture their story of what life was like working on the river, living in a community where the river was an important natural resource, and hopefully gain an understanding of what it means to be a river worker. If any of my dear readers know anyone, by all means send them my way!

The Angel Site Part 2 Excavation

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Father Angel Site in Greene County, southwestern Pennsylvania! This blog post is about some of the methods employed by archaeologists

The first thing everyone needs to know is that there are several phases or steps in conducting archaeological excavations. I'm going to explain each phase to make it easy to understand the work involved in doing field work.

Phase Ia- Background research, property research, deeds, death certificates, etc.

Phase I Survey- digging small .50m X .50m square or round shovel test pits (STPs) and screening the soil for artifacts. These holes are placed on an imaginary grid, with a datum point (beginning point) and aligned either to true north, grid north, or magnetic north.

Phase II- At this phase, there were artifacts were found in the shovel test pits, and these pits were expanded to 1m X 1m shovel test units (STUs). These are 1 meter square and can be a meter or more in depth depending on the soil conditions. Let's say, a floodplain of a stream or river compared to a farmer's field.

Phase III Site Mitigation- At this point, a substantial site has been discovered and a large excavation must occur. These projects are big, expensive, and can be long term, from weeks to months to several years! This is the point at which the most of a site is excavated. I say most, because archaeologists generally do not dig 100% of a site. We like to leave a portion for future archaeologists with better tools, equipment, and technology to excavate to get better information.

On today's video, I'm visiting the Father Angel Site once again. Here we see two students taking the field school excavating a 1m X 2m unit with a 1m X 1m unit attached to it. Archaeologists love squares, their are like a small window into the past. The larger the square, the larger the window!

In this video are Shari Bechtel from California University of Pennsylvania, Marissa Miller also from Cal U, and Jamie Waldrop from West Virginia University. You will see them troweling and gathering the soil into a bucket. From there a person takes it to the "screener" where she will sift it through a mesh screen revealing the artifacts. The Father Angel Site is at a Phase II level of excavation depending on what they found there, it will probably go to a Phase III next year! Watch on and see the archaeologists at work! throughout the nation to conduct their field surveys.