Out of the ashes of a devastating fireplace, archeologists are uncovering thrilling insights into Ohio historical past. On December 7, 2024, a hearth swept by southwestern Ohio’s Overfield Tavern Museum in Troy, destroying a number of historic objects within the museum’s assortment. However the fireplace additionally offered a novel alternative: to excavate beneath the greater than 200-year-old construction. In the course of the dig, a crew of archaeologists uncovered an 1817 50-cent piece, ceramics, and Native American artifacts, and extra beneath the charred floorboards.
“Hundreds of artifacts had been recovered and are at present being washed, cataloged, and studied by the archaeologists in preparation for a report of investigations,” Government Director M. Chris Manning tells Fashionable Science.
The Overfield Tavern Museum is housed in a log constructing that Benjamin and Margaret Overfield in-built 1808. The younger couple emigrated to the Ohio frontier from japanese Pennsylvania in 1803, when Ohio turned the seventeenth U.S. state.
“The tavern was the primary constructing in Troy and served as a tavern, inn, county courthouse for 3 years, and common gathering place for the neighborhood,” says Manning.
It turned Troy’s first courthouse in 1811 and remained a working tavern till 1824. In 1976, the Overfield Tavern was listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations.
Whereas the constructing’s log partitions survived the hearth, a big assortment of historic artifacts inside from the Nineteenth century had been misplaced to the flames. After the hearth, it turned clear that to revive the historic tavern the entire flooring would should be ripped up and changed. However this additionally offered an thrilling alternative for the museum board and workers to see what lay beneath the centuries-old wood flooring.
In line with Manning, the dig started earlier this month and lasted 10 days. A crew of six archeologists excavated a number of areas, together with beneath the floorboards of three of the tavern’s rooms. The archeology crew additionally performed floor penetrating radar investigations within the yard to establish anomalies earlier than digging started. One of many anomalies corresponded with a masonry outbuilding that’s proven on historic maps, and an excavation unit investigated that web site as nicely.
“The 1817 50-cent piece was discovered beneath the ground contained in the tavern and should have been used to buy a beverage or meal on the tavern when it was in operation,” says Manning. “We additionally discovered giant quantities of animal bones, significantly pig and fish, which displays the eating regimen of the early occupants. We all know that the Overfields owned 78 hogs in 1810, a few of which had been seemingly butchered on the positioning as indicated by the invention of pig jaw bones.”
A few of the different artifacts of word embrace a fraction of a adorned smoking pipe; clay marbles; buttons produced from bone, glass, metallic, and shell; straight pins used to lock clothes; a fragile finger ring; what seems to be a French gunflint; a variety of damaged ceramics starting from redware to hand-painted pearlware to transfer-printed whiteware; and two damaged prehistoric projectile factors (arrowheads).
Most of the new finds will assist replenish the tavern’s collections, whereas an architect specializing in log buildings will assist rebuild and restore the historic tavern. The full value is estimated to be about $1 million.
“We hope to reopen the totally restored museum in late 2027,” says Manning. “Regardless of the devastation of the hearth and the lack of invaluable museum objects, we’re excited concerning the future and the chance we’ve to inform the story of Troy’s unique gathering place even higher than earlier than.”
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