Submitted photo
Alex Flick, left, Brad Hatch and Maggie Lucio investigate shovel tests at the Notley Hall archaeological site.
From 1634 until 1695, St. Mary’s City was Maryland’s first capital. However, for a time official business of the colony was also sometimes conducted on waterfront property in Maddox.
The eighth governor of Maryland, Thomas Notley, lived on the Wicomico River on land today called Notley Hall. It is here where the Council of Maryland sometimes met and where Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, sometimes resided.
A group of archaeologists and students from St. Mary’s College of Maryland worked last month in a cornfield excavating a foot of earth at a time looking for clues to exactly where Notley’s home was.
They found plenty of Indian ceramics and other artifacts predating Notley’s time there. They also found red and yellow bricks, a sure sign of a structure on the site.
To begin the search a cornfield was divided into quadrants. Then came the shovel test; hole were dug about a foot deep into soil that goes back to colonial and American Indian times. The loose dirt was put on a small tarp. Then the dirt was sifted, leaving any large solid objects.
Once the color and texture of the soil changes, it tracks back into the prehistoric period, said Skylar Bauer, who just graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a degree in anthropology.
She made the Notley site her senior research project at the college.
Bauer said there was “almost definitely” an Indian settlement on the land there before English settlers arrived.
The bricks were easier to find. Many of them are exposed in the field in a certain spot where it is likely a structure was, said Julie King, professor of anthropology at St. Mary’s College, who is supervising the dig.
Red bricks are a common find, but most of these bricks are yellow. Records show that a vessel from Sweden brought over 50,000 yellow bricks, which were used for chimneys or decorative work in the area, King said. “They’re on the edge of the world,” she said of the Maryland colonists. “They’ve got these Swedish bricks and they’re trying to replicate the world they left behind.”
It is only the second time that the site has been explored by archaeologists. The last time was in 1981. “Everybody knew it was Notley Hall, but nobody ever did any work,” King said.
Notley, a Catholic who converted to become a Protestant, was a merchant who came to St. Mary’s County in 1662 from Barbados. He was on good terms with Lord Baltimore’s family as well as their opponent Josiah Fendall, who threatened to overthrow the Calvert family’s rule of the Maryland colony.
Charles Calvert, the Lord Baltimore of the time, lived at the Mattapany tract on today’s Cedar Point, “but he was over here a lot,” King said at the Notley Hall site last month. Notley “is beloved by the Calvert family.”
Notley served in the lower house of the Maryland assembly, and was governor from 1676 to 1679 and justice of the Provincial Court during that same time.
It was in 1676 that a new brick state house was built at St. Mary’s City that also served as the colony’s and the county’s courthouse. That building stood until it was pulled down in 1830, according to “Narrative and Critical History of America,” by Justin Winsor. A reconstructed state house now sits in the site.
The Provincial Council met at various locations, King said, and would go to Notley’s property because it was close for the Piscataway Indians.
A case tried in 1678 at Notley’s property involved three Piscataway Indians Wassetass, Azazams and Manahawton who were charged with killing Englishman Daniel Conningham and his family at the head of the Patuxent River. Azazams and Manahawton were ordered “to be shot to death without delay,” but Wassetass’ life was spared, according to records of the Council of Maryland.
The Indian emperor sent word of “thanks to his lordship for his great favor and mercy towards them in granting them the life of Wassetass,” according to proceedings of the Council of Maryland.
The creek to the north of Notley’s property is called Manahowic Creek, which supposedly meant “they dig them,” King said, probably in reference to oysters.
Notley was a wealthy man. When he died in April 1679, he had 2,750 acres of land, 34,560 pounds of tobacco, 29 slaves, seven servants and book collection, according to a property inventory made days after his death.
Notley had no survivors and his assets went to Charles Calvert.
Today, the property investigated last month during the archaeological dig is under an agricultural easement and can’t be developed, King said.
jbabcock@somdnews.com