Charleston's West Side hills, a blend of compact residential neighborhoods and steep, forested terrain, may seem an unlikely place to conduct an archaeological survey to learn more about 19th-century plantation life.
But on Saturday, a team of 20 college students and volunteers led by two professional archaeologists and the head of West Virginia State University's history department began a two-day dig on a two-acre remnant of Glenwood, one of five plantations that flourished, thanks to the labor of more than 70 slaves, on the then-unsettled west side of the Elk River in the two decades leading up to the Civil War.
In 1850, Parkersburg native James Madison Laidley, a lawyer, newspaper publisher and recently retired member of the Virginia General Assembly, bought 366 acres of land one mile west of the mouth of the Elk, and hired English-born stonemason William Preston to begin building a two-story brick residence for his estate.
"His land stretched from river to ridgetop," said Billy Joe Peyton, chairman of WVSU's history department and a member of the Historic Glenwood Foundation's board of directors.
A brick building housing the estate's kitchen and domestic slave quarters was completed first, and in 1852, Glenwood's gable-roofed, Greek revival-style estate residence was completed and occupied.
Laidley sold Glenwood to George W. Summers Jr, in 1857, and Summers continued to develop the property into a plantation, making use of the 14 slaves he reported owning in the 1860 census. While Summers, a four-term member of the Virginia Assembly and a two-term congressman, was a slave owner, he opposed secession and spoke in favor of the gradual emancipation of slaves, although he kept those he owned until the end of the war.
Construction of a suspension bridge across the Elk River in 1850 "made it possible for gentlemen farmers like Laidley, Summers and the other plantation owners to commute from the West Side back into Charleston, where their offices were," said Bob Maslowski, a retired Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist, who teaches an Appalachian archeology course at Marshall University's South Charleston campus.
While only two acres surrounding the estate house are all that remain of the Glenwood plantation, more than 400 photos collected by the Historic Glenwood Foundation from the late 19th and early 20th century indicate that a number of outbuildings, including a smokehouse, carriage house, wine cellar and small wooden dwelling once occupied the grounds. If their subterranean remnants can be located, excavated and analyzed, they could shed new light on how the plantation was operated and what life was like for the owners and slaves who lived and worked there.
"Through archeology, a lot has been learned and written about plantation life in Virginia, but in West Virginia, only one plantation - the Jenkins Plantation at Green Bottom in Mason County - and a slave cabin at the Reynolds home near the Marmet Locks, have had an archaeological excavation until now," Maslowski said.
By digging basketball-sized test holes every 10 meters along a grid line, "We're trying to see if we can detect any of the outbuildings," said Stephen McBride, director of interpretation and archeology at Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park in Kentucky, who co-teaches Marshall's Appalachian archeology class with Maslowski. McBride and his archaeologist wife, Kim, have conducted numerous surveys of 18th Century frontier forts across West Virgina.
In areas where numerous artifacts like dinnerware, crockery, window glass and nails that correspond to 19th-century manufacture are found, larger excavation sites will be established.
"We would like to find the slave cabins where the field hands lived, but with only two acres of the plantation left, that may not be likely," Peyton said.
"You can find a lot of artifacts in refuse dumps and outhouse pits, so we'll be looking for those, too," said Maslowski.
Saturday's dig was the first exposure to hands-on archeology for Lynn Shannon of St. Albans, a student in the Appalachian archeology class.
"I like it," she said, as she sifted material from the test holes through a wire screen box. "It's fun to play in the dirt and find things."
"After teaching school all week in Greenbrier County, and driving back and forth to South Charleston for classes, digging holes on weekends is fun," added classmate Beth Carroll.
Among the day's volunteer diggers was 15-year-old Alex Anderson, a George Washington High School student, who was plucking shards of glass, slivers of pottery, pieces of brick, nails and chunks of coal from the top of a screen box.
"I love West Virginia history, and I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up," said the Golden Horseshoe winner. "When I found out this was happening just two blocks from my house, I had to come and try to help out."
By early Saturday afternoon, artifacts recovered from the back lawn at Glenwood included such 19th Century relics as a button fashioned from cow bone, shards of redware, whiteware and salt-glazed stoneware pottery, cut nails and pieces of window glass.
"Most people who live on the West Side have no idea of the history their neighborhood," Maslowski said. "But who knows? Some day we may be giving plantation tours of the West Side."
The public is inivited to watch or take part in the survey, scheduled to continue on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Glenwood Estate, at the corner of Park Avenue and Orchard Street near Stonewall Jackson Middle School. The event is sponsored by the Historic Glenwood Foundation and the Glenwood Center for Scholarship in the Humanities, through a grant from the West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office of the state Division of Culture and History.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5169, or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.