Fragments of bones, kitchenware, and oyster shells are just some of the artifacts that give experts like Laura Masur a better idea of what life was like on a Jesuit plantation in Southern Maryland during the 1700s and 1800s. This summer, Masur led an archaeological excavation near St. Francis Xavier Church in Newtowne as one of the latest endeavors to discover more about the colonial Catholic Church’s participation in slavery.

Laura Masur, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at The Catholic University of America. Masur, who led the fieldwork from Tuesday July 12 to Saturday July 23, was joined by anthropology students and members of the parish throughout the two week-long, grant-funded project. The kind of research that Masur and her team conducted requires not only the use of specialized technology and physical labor, but a deeper knowledge of history to provide context. 

St. Francis Xavier Church was constructed around 1731, and the adjacent Newtowne Manor House, erected in 1789, is located in Newtowne Neck State Park at 21370 Newtowne Neck Road in Leonardtown, Maryland. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Jesuits established at least eight plantations on that land to fund both their missionary and educational goals in Maryland. 

The dig sites were located near St. Francis Xavier Church, which is still used by parishioners today, and where Father Ryan Pineda has served as parish administrator for the past year and one-half.

“There are good parts, but there are also bad parts in the history of the Catholic Church, so I think we should be aware of that,” Father Pineda said. 

During the dig, Father Pineda was able to speak with Masur's crew about what they discovered. When it comes to dealing with the Church's connection with slavery, Catholics must first recognize the reality of the Church's role, according to Father Pineda.

 “Realize that it is really part of our history, that you cannot deny that part of the history, that there were slaves here, but again you cannot change the history,” Father Pineda said. 

Masur’s dig was not the first team to research in the area, and Father Pineda said other groups have contacted him to dig there. He hopes that more researchers explore the area moving forward.

“I hope that they can dig more, if they spend more time like a month or so, they could find more,” Father Pineda said. “I’m really happy there was a dig, it creates an awareness, people should know about our history and they should know about this church, the oldest Catholic church in the original colonies.”

Understanding ground penetrating radar

Prior to breaking ground, images were taken of the area using ground penetrating radar. GPR works by firing an energy pulse into the ground and measuring the intensity and time it takes for any reflected signal to return. GPR may reach roughly four inches into the ground, which is referred to as "time slices."

According to Masur, the white areas that appear in the images are considered baseline, while dark images indicate an “anomaly.” This helps guide the team on where they can expect to find something in the ground, such as artifacts or “features.” In an excavation, a feature refers to an element that is found that cannot be moved, such as a wall.

“When we dig, we dig in terms of the natural soil layers, so we dig until we see a change in the concentration of the artifacts, the type of artifacts, or a change in the soil,” Masur said.

Masur said there were three questions she considers when looking at the GPR evidence of buildings that existed on the property exterior to the manor: what time period do they date to, what are they used for, and what are they made of?

“They’re all interrelated, if you have a house that has a brick foundation, you’re generally not going to see that until the 1700s, so if you have something earlier, then it probably doesn’t have a brick foundation,” Masur said. 

The crew then dug eight five-by-five feet squares, known as "units," into the earth in various levels. They completely stop digging once reaching the subsoil, as there is no cultural material beyond that level of the terrain. 

“If I see a lot of oysters and animal bones and pottery, that tells me, okay this was probably a kitchen,” Masur said. This was true of Unit #3, which revealed a cellar filled with oyster shells. The team then removes oysters, keeping only the ones with hinges for their research. The rest are donated to other organizations. Using reference examples, Masur believes that the cellar potentially dates back to the early 1700s.

A manor on the water

After the first colony in St. Mary's City, Newtowne was the first settlement in the Maryland province. According to the church's website, its position puts it within sight of St. Clement's Island, where the first English colonists arrived in 1634. 

Through GPR, a previous manor house may be seen underneath in what is currently considered the present manor house's front yard. It was discovered archaeologically around 40 years ago. Masur said that, according to oral tradition, it is believed that the original house may have been burned down by the British due to the Jesuit support of the patriot cause during the American Revolution. This is difficult to verify however, Masur noted, as many records would have been burned as well. 

Identifying the “front” of the manor is not intuitive with today’s standards for architecture.

“The general interpretation is that this is the front because when you’re looking at life in the 18th century, you’re always thinking of water as the highway,” Masur said. “We’re on a neck of land, most people coming to Newtowne Neck are coming through the water.”

Garden features were found in the area south of the manor house, potentially where hedges were planted for an ornamental garden. 

“When you think about your image of a plantation, you imagine the front yard as sort of immaculate, maybe you have gardens and a tree lined lane, but that’s an image that gets created during the 19th and 20th centuries,” Masur said. What people would have seen when approaching the manor at the time would have been a working yard.

Through the GPR imaging, the team was able to identify and confirm the location of three structures. These include the brick foundations, earthen cellar, and the sandstone foundations of a chimney that is potentially from a 19th century slave quarter.

It is not assured that the team will uncover a structure in the region after GPR detects an "anomaly," which is why Masur said that the next step is to "ground truth" them.

“Just to make sure that they’re actually there and it’s not just something weird, because one of the units we opened, I said, ‘Oh, it looks like there’s a structure here,’ but it was an anomaly that came from sand that was dumped into the unit,” Masur said. “I can’t say for certain…if there’s a structure in that area…we’d have to go back and dig some more.”

Referring back to the aforementioned cellar, it is unknown if the cellar came before or after the manor house, or whether it has any link to the current manor house at all.

“I think if it’s contemporaneous with a manor house, it’s not the standing manor house, it’s one of the earlier ones, it might be that earlier brick one that’s underground that you can see in the ground penetrating radar results,” Masur said.

Bones, chamber pots, and other findings

A large screen was used to filter through the dug up soil in order to uncover any little items that would otherwise go unnoticed, such as bones. Masur said she is more comfortable identifying mammal bones over bird bones. 

“Whatever cellar was there, it went out of use when it was filled in, and so most of the trash is oysters, animal bones, and a little bit of pottery and wine bottle glass, but you’re going to throw anything in there,” Masur said.  

Ultimately, items will be definitely identified back at the lab on campus. A white ball clay tobacco pipe was found, along with a chamber pot in what is believed to have been a refuse heap.

“I think we underestimate the number of chamber pots that are floating around when you have a large estate,” Masur said. 

The dig uncovered various artifacts from the time, including a brick foundation, fragments of wine bottles and a “Frozen Charlotte” doll. 

Frozen Charlotte dolls were a model of china doll made popular during the Victorian era and received their name from an American folk song titled “Fair Charlotte,” which tells the story of a young woman, Charlotte, who did not dress warm enough to go on a sleigh ride and froze to death.  

“We don’t always get the answer of why are they doing this, what is this used for, but we have a little more information than before we dug,” Masur said.

Two portions of foundation were found intersecting at a “T” at unit #6. There were two types of bricks found on the site, handmade and machine made. Masur is able to distinguish between the two by examining texture and color. 

The handmade bricks were probably made in Newtowne by enslaved people during the 18th century. The more uniformed looking bricks are assumed to have been machine made during the late 1800s.

 “We’re trying to understand the relationship between those two parts of the building so we can try and understand what the landscape looks like during different points in time,” Masur said. 

She believes the varying bricks may be explained by an addition to the structure.

Descendants dig for family history

Henrietta Pike’s ancestors were from St. Inigoes plantation, operated by the Jesuits. For Pike, who has known Masur for over a year since initially connecting through a Facebook group dedicated to relatives of enslaved people of Southern Maryland, it is important to learn more about her family through the digs. 

Pike joined Masur during a dig at St. Inigoes last summer, where they returned for a week this summer to conduct some work as well. Pike told the Catholic Standard that her great-great grandmother Louisa Mahoney Mason was enslaved on the Inigoes plantation. 

“We did some work there, I got to see where Louisa Mahoney’s house used to be,” Pike said.

The sale of 272 enslaved men, women, and children by Jesuit priests in Maryland to plantations in the south is now known as the GU272, which dates back to that sale in 1838.

“There was a big sell, and the Jesuits needed to finance Georgetown College, and one of the ways they were going to finance it was by selling the slaves,” Pike said. 

Pike's ancestor's participation in the sale was recounted in a research paper published by Paul Rochford from The Georgetown Slavery Archive titled "Louisa Mahoney Mason Family Narrative."

Louisa Mason, who was about 26 years old at the time of the sale, and her mother were among 80 enslaved people who stayed in Maryland. According to Rochford, the Jesuits claim that one of the priests was against the sale, warned the enslaved people about what was going on, so many hid in the woods until the boat sailed away. 

Pike and her brother were astonished to learn that they were related to individuals in Louisiana after taking a DNA genealogy test.

“We did the DNA [test] and found out that, hey, part of the Mahoney family was sold to Lousianna, and not only were they sold once, they were sold again, all throughout Lousianna, the different parishes down there were selling them off,” Pike said. 

They were contacted by a genealogist from Georgetown University, who informed them about the history of the GU272.

“It’s a big history down here in Southern Maryland,” Pike said. She now keeps in touch with her discovered relatives in Louisiana. 

“We have a Zoom call every week on Thursday, they have Facebook groups…we text each other back and all of that is really great, connecting with them,” Pike said. 

Some questions are still left unanswered, however, as Pike does not know where Mason’s remains are buried.

“If you read in the St. Mary’s Beacon, her funeral was one of the most prominent Black funerals ever in St. Mary’s County back in 1909, see the sale was back in 1838, so she lived to be almost 100, they really honored her when she was buried, but we cannot find her grave,” Pike said. “That’s the search.” 

St. Mary’s Beacon was a newspaper published from 1839 until 1983 in Leonardtown, Maryland. 

Pike said that these insights have not only broadened her family, but have also transformed her connection with a religion that has been passed down through generations.

“It’s what I call bittersweet, in a way, you say, ‘Oh, is this why I’m so Catholic? Is this why I’m so religious?’ Several [descendants of Louisa Mahoney] turned out to be nuns, cooks for the college, and they were just faithful to them. I just couldn’t believe that priests owned slaves, that’s the part that threw me. They believed in marriage, so you have marriage information, they believed in baptizing them, so you see baptismal records,” Pike said. 

Despite the atrocities of the slave trade, Pike is keen to learn more about her family's history as well as her recently discovered relatives. 

“As far as me and my history, I can read some of the letters of the priests and say, that is my ancestor, so that’s the sweet part about it,” Pike said.

The letters Pike is referencing are the Woodstock Letters, which were articles published by Woodstock College and the Maryland Province from 1872 to 1969. The letters include information and details on transactions including enslaved people. 

 Looking forward

"We always find something big on the last day," Masur said. Post holes were found just before wrapping up the dig site; she believes they could be leftover from a fence line.

Digging up dirt and artifacts is just the beginning for Masur, as she said she will be working on this project for the next six months, which includes a trip to The Catholic University of America anthropology lab. 

“The real process of discovery happens in the lab, and so that’s something that we’ll be working on over the next few months, and I’ll have a much clearer picture of what’s going on at the site,” Masur said. 

It is important to Masur that her research includes a public element, including public talks and the upcoming website she is working on publishing that will serve as a "digital museum."

“The website can sort of be a living document, we can add to it as we have more research results, as we take really good photos,” Masur said. 

Masur also needs to set aside time to work on her book, which will be a culmination of the work she has done for over a decade now.

“When I’m writing, I need to take a little bit of a break from just the technical analysis and I need to be able to step back and think of it in terms of narrative and storytelling,” Masur said. 

In retrospect, this endeavor was a small component of Masur’s larger investigation of economic structures in Catholic plantation communities. Numerous unanswered questions and circling hypotheses concerning what existed before to the current buildings may never be totally resolved. For the time being, though, the unearthed artifacts are off to the lab.