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Notice the change in brick patterns between the original house and newer additions.
Detail of Flemish bond: headers and stretchers alternate on each course.
Located a block away from the Customs House, the original structure of the Hynson-Ringgold House was also built in the early 1740s. Thomas Ringgold built the remainder of the structure in the late 1760s. For the past sixty years it has served as the home for WC presidents.
Custom House Dig
June 2000
Archaeologists from Washington College recently began a two-week archaeological investigation at Chestertown's Custom House, at the foot of High Street. The excavations were prompted by the College's plans for a substantial renovation of the old building, a restoration that might disturb centuries old archaeological remains.
The discoveries at the site have included materials that may pre-date the existing 1745 house. Archaeologists also have uncovered well-preserved organic materials such as leather and wood. As a result of these unexpected discoveries, the investigation has been extended through mid-July.
The Custom House was given to the College by the late Wilbur Ross Hubbard, a long-time member of Washington College's Board of Visitors and Governors. It will serve as the headquarters for the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.
The building is being restored with assistance from grants from the Maryland Historic Trust and the C. V. Starr Foundation.
History
The original section of the Custom House was built around 1745 by a local innkeeper and merchant named Samuel Massey. The distinctive brickwork of the house's facade, a style that uses glazed brick in a decorative pattern, marks it as a prominent building for its time. It was acquired from Massey in 1749 and enlarged substantially by another of Kent County's most prominent citizens, Thomas Ringgold. Ringgold was an attorney and member of the House of Burgesses, and he had extensive mercantile connections, interests in ship-building yards, and large land-holdings.
Ringgold supervised his holdings from the Custom House, located at the corner of High and Front Streets. The house overlooked Chestertown's main wharf at the foot of High Street. Vaults and cellars beneath the house were used for storage, and the grounds held a wide variety of buildings over the years. Historical documents refer to a dry goods store, a cooper's shop (barrel and cask maker), granaries, storehouses, and wharves.
The location of the house also made it ideal for watching the coming and going of ships and cargos from Chestertown's busy colonial harbor. Prior to the American Revolution, the District Customs Collector used at least one room in the house or an adjacent structure as an office, giving the building the name it has retained ever since, the Custom House.
During the 1800s, the Custom House saw a variety of owners come and go, and the uses of the house and its grounds changed. Outbuildings for the residence included a carriage house, a meat house, and privies, and commercial structures included warehouses and canning factories. For many years, the house was divided into apartments. In 1909 the property was purchased by the Hubbard family, who remained the owners until the property recently was given to Washington College.
Field Techniques
So that archaeologists can map and accurately record where things were found, the first step is to set up a grid across the site. Grid stakes are placed at regular intervals and each is labeled with a coordinate, a measurement telling how far away the point is from the grid's beginning. N50/E100, for example, means that the point 50 meters north of the grid's origin and 100 meters east of the origin.
Excavation units are squares or rectangles laid out for excavation within the grid. Each is numbered, so that material from different units can be tracked.
When archaeologists dig, they excavate one layer at a time. Just as natural soils or rocks are layered in the earth, archaeological sites are made up of layers or strata. Each layer represents a different time period, so by digging stratigraphically, one layer at a time, archaeologists can sort out the history of a site.
In most layers, archaeologists will find artifacts, things that were made and then lost or discarded by people. The layer and location in which an artifact was found is recorded, and artifacts from each layer are kept together, as they are from different time periods.
Because some artifacts are extremely small, such as pins, beads, or seeds, all of the excavated dirt is screened through wire mesh. Screening ensures that no small objects are missed.
Artifacts
Artifacts are objects that were made by people of the past—usually things that can be picked up and moved, such as tools and pottery; features are things made by people that are too big to move, such as walls, pits, or wells.
The materials we recover during this dig may reveal important insights into the construction phases and history of the Custom House and the everyday life of its occupants.
—John Seidel, Assistant Professor of Archaeology
These small decorative pins were found near the rear of the Custom House. The pin on the left has a geometric blue motif, while the other has an unusual design in the shape of a banjo.
Nails are common finds. Although these are badly corroded, archaeologists can distinguish between the hand-wrought nails of the colonial period and later varieties of machine-made nails. The size and shape of a nail may provide a clue to its specific function.
During the first decades of the Custom House's use, Chestertown was an English colonial port. Ceramics from around the world found their way to householders in the town. This piece of salt-glazed stoneware came from the rim of a mug or pitcher and is decorated with incised lines filled with cobalt blue.
Trash such as seeds, shells, and bone provide clues to diet and foodways. This bone has distinctive marks that show it came from a thin cut of meat that was sawn by a butcher.
Buttons throughout the historical period varied in size, shape, and material. Some of the buttons depicted here are made of bone and shell, while others are made of glass.
White clay, or kaolin, tobacco pipes are common on colonial sites. The long stems were fragile, and hundreds of these fragments are often found. The size of the bore through which smoke was drawn decreased over time, so pipe stems can be used by archaeologists as a dating tool.
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