XON ILL ANOR OOXON HH HILLILL MM MANORANOR The Archaeology and History of “A WORLD THEY MADE TOGETHER” Oxon Hill Manor The Archaeology and History of “A World They Made Together” John P. McCarthy Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum and Maryland Historical Trust St. Leonard, Maryland; Crownsville, Maryland Published by the Maryland Historical Trust Press and Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. © 2010 by the Maryland Historical Trust All rights reserved. Published 2010. Printed in the United States of America. The Maryland Historical Trust Press 100 Community Place Crownsville, MD 21032 Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum 10515 Mackall Road St. Leonard, MD 20685 ISBN 1-878399-88-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the publisher. The last phase of archaeology at Oxon Hill Manor was halted by the financial difficulties of the company funding the work. For many years the project remained unfinished, until the Peterson Companies, as part of the National Harbor development, agreed to pay for this publication, even though the previous archaeological project was not its responsibility. John Milner Associates, Inc., was retained to prepare this booklet. John P. McCarthy, RPA, who co-directed investigations at the site with Dr. Charles D. Cheek in 1986 through 1988, prepared the text and chose the illustrations. Initial formatting of the publication was done by John Milner Associates, Inc. It was edited by the staff of the Maryland Historical Trust. The artifacts from Oxon Hill are curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. "The World They Made Together" The subtitle of this booklet, The Archaeology and History of a "World They Made Together" is borrowed from Mechal Sobel's 1987 volume, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia. When it first appeared, Sobel's book was considered a stunning reinterpretation of colonial Virginia culture. Sobel argued that enslaved Africans significantly influenced the architectural, religious, economic, and social customs of eighteenth- century Virginia. While the English planters and enslaved Africans originated in different cultures half a world apart, their close interaction in the New World (playing together as children, planter children raised by African-American nannies, planter economic, and sometimes emotional, dependence on the enslaved, etc.) brought their different "world views" into contact. Through time, each was influenced by the other, resulting in a culture distinct from that which either had previously known. Having heard Dr. Sobel speak at a symposium on African-American culture at Colonial Williamsburg shortly following the publication of The World They Made Together, while excavations were ongoing at Oxon Hill, I was struck by the simple elegance and obvious truth of her argument. Upon returning to the material of Oxon Hill after 15 years, I was inspired by Sobel's insight and chose to organize this booklet around the concept that Oxon Hill was a plantation world that the Addisons and enslaved Africans made together. This is not intended in any way to diminish the brutality and inhumanity of the chattel slave economy on which planters relied, but is rather intended to recognize the important role of the enslaved in making the world of the Chesapeake plantation possible. John P. McCarthy, RPA OXON HILL MANOR: A PLANTATION WORLD On February 7, 1895, the Baltimore Sun published the following notice: Alexandria, Va., February 6th — Another one of Maryland's historic mansions has been destroyed. The spacious dwelling house on Oxon Hill, overlooking the Potomac, opposite Alexandria, caught fire last night, and was left a wreck by the flames at daybreak this morning. This mansion has long been one of the landmarks of the neighbor- hood of Washington, and with Mount Vernon, Belvoir, and Carlisle House, made up the noted mansions of the neighborhood in colonial days. T hus it was that Oxon Hill Manor came to its end. The manor house had been the seat of a large agricultural plantation established in the late seventeenth century on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River in Prince George's County, Maryland (Figure 1). More recently, this area was the proposed site of PortAmerica and National Harbor, large commercial development projects. Fig. 1. Location of the Addison plantation at Oxon Originally purchased by Col. John Addison Hill, Maryland, I-95 near the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. in 1687, the estate became home to four servants and enslaved Africans they subsequent generations of the Addison owned. This was a world they made family. Col. Thomas Addison owned the together; a world that flourished over property from his father John's death in 200 years ago, a world that is foreign 1705 until his own death in 1727. Thomas' to us today; but one about which we son, Capt. John Addison, owned the can understand much by using the property until 1764 when his son Thomas methods of history and archaeology. inherited it. In turn, his son, Walter Dulany Addison, inherited the property when Mandated by regulations requiring the Thomas died in 1774. The Addisons' identification, evaluation, and protection tenure came to an end when Walter sold of significant cultural resources, including the manor house and most of the original archaeological sites, during development property to Zachariah Berry in 1810. The projects, archaeological investigations Berry family sold the manor house to began on the property in 1980. It was this Samuel Taylor Suit in 1888. The property archaeology that provided the first key to had numerous owners over the next the world of the Addisons. This booklet few years until the manor house was tells their story, and the story of Oxon Hill finally destroyed in 1895. Manor in the eighteenth century, in three main parts and several sidebars. It is a story Oxon Hill Manor, like other important of landscapes, the planter lifestyle, and the colonial plantations, was created by enslaved workers who made it possible. ambitious planters and the indentured 1 LANDSCAPE: Maryland: HOUSES AND GARDENS Tobacco Colony The Englishmen transplanted to colonial Maryland brought with them ideas of their homeland, including an ancient landscape of Maryland was established on June 20, 1632, when Cecilius Calvert, roads built by the Romans, hedgerows and fields the second Lord Baltimore, became used from medieval times, and castles and the first proprietor of the new manor houses belonging to the aristocracy and colony under a charter granted by landed gentry. This landscape reflected social King Charles I. While Maryland, like and economic realities and shaped perceptions of other British colonies of the North what was right and what was possible. It is not American mainland, was founded surprising, then, that English planters in the partly as a religious haven, it dif- Chesapeake, as their wealth and social power fered in that no religion was given increased, sought to create plantation landscapes official status. Rather, people of that reflected their position and aspirations. The any Christian faith were welcome, and any man not disqualified by Addisons were no exception to this trend; in other restrictions, such as age or fact, they appear to have been among the first in servile status, was eligible to hold the region to express their social position by office and vote, regardless of his building in brick. religious beliefs. This may not seem At Oxon Hill the principal elements of the particularly remarkable to us today, but in the early seventeenth century plantation landscape were the original timber- it was extraordinary. The Calvert's framed, post-in-the-ground house; the brick were Roman Catholics, a persecuted manor house that replaced it as the principal minority in Britain at this time. residence on the property; and the gardens Rather than seek a haven for associated with the brick house. It should be Catholics alone, Cecilius, and his noted that the plantation landscape would have father before him, sought a colony included many additional elements, including that would welcome all Christians, farm buildings and houses for overseers, a position they felt more palatable indentured servants, tenants, and the enslaved. to the Crown. In successfully The following discussion focuses only on the gaining a royal charter it appears that they may have been correct in principal elements from the eighteenth century, this assumption. for which we have the most information. As settlement took hold, tobacco The Earthfast House quickly became the major export When Col. John Addison purchased the land that crop and primary source of income would be Oxon Hill Manor in 1687, that portion (Figure A). Most who immigrated of (then) Charles County was on the frontier of came to the colony as indentured European settlement up the Potomac River servants, and most were of British Valley. He, or a tenant, first built an “earthfast” origin. The tobacco economy house - a house framed on posts set in the offered great promise of success, ground. We do not know if Col. John Addison provided that one did not die too ever resided in this house. He died without soon of malaria or one of the other diseases new to the settlers. Once a making a will (wills often include statements like servant was free, usually after four "the plantation where I now dwell" or other hints to seven years of service, he received of residence), and his estate inventory does not from his former master corn for a specify his residence. year, seed for the following year, The earthfast house, as revealed through archaeological excavation, measured 2 clothing, an axe, and a hoe. Once capital and international commercial established, he could import servants to connections, and some combined make the most of his land, which he cultivation of tobacco (and sometimes might rent before affording a place of wheat) with mercantile trade, iron works, his own.