Tag: Herring Run Park

Works of Art in the Past and the Artists Who Make Them Today

On two new tours this spring we are celebrating great art from Baltimore’s past and meeting the people who are making and teaching art in Baltimore’s present. On April 27, please join us on a visit to one of the grandest art collections in the city on our tour: Travel to the Gilded Age at Evergreen House. Evergreen House, once the home of Ambassador T. Harrison Garrett and his artist wife Alice Garrett, is a splendid building filled with the Garrett family’s art collection (including paintings by Degas and Picasso and one of the world’s largest collections of Tiffany glass).

On May 11, our tour of the Schuler School of Fine Arts is a chance to learn about a school that carries on the work of master Baltimore sculptor Hans Schuler. From Samuel Smith at the top of Federal Hill to Martin Luther near Lake Montebello, Schuler’s figurative monuments and sculptures adorn the city. Today, students learn the techniques of the Old World masters in the house and studio that has been part the Schuler family story for over a century. On our tour with the Schuler relatives and art instructors, we’ll see finished work by Schuler and works-in-progress by current students at the school.

Finally, we hope you can join us and our partners with the Herring Run Archaeology Project at our 2017 open house this Saturday, April 29. Project archaeologists Jason Shellenhamer and Lisa Kraus along with a great group of local volunteers are looking forward to sharing the story of the Eutaw manor house and the archaeology of the park with visitors from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm.

Volunteer to help in the lab for the Herring Run Archaeology Project

The Herring Run Park Archaeology Project saw some exciting finds in the field this spring. But archaeologists Lisa Kraus and Jason Shellenhamer will tell you that archaeology isn’t just about what you find, it’s what you find out! Please join the project’s new volunteer lab manager Karen Hutchins-Keim and student intern Lily Roze Annenberg this summer as we clean and process the artifacts recovered during our archaeological dig this past spring. Go ahead and sign up today!

You do not need any previous experience to participate. High school-aged volunteers are welcome. Working in the lab is a great way to learn how archaeologists identify and analyze artifacts whether they are broken pieces of brick or delicate shards of pottery.

Lab work is scheduled for Saturday afternoons, 12:00pm to 3:00pm, between July 9 and August 13 at the Natural History Society of Maryland at 6908 Belair Road, Baltimore, MD 21206. Space for volunteers is currently limited to five people on each date so sign up soon with your interest.

You can also support the project by making a donation online to help cover the costs of the materials we use to conserve the artifacts. Finally, you can learn more about the dig with series of “Field Notes from Herring Run” that Lisa and Jason shared this past spring.

Artifacts from the Herring Run Archaeology Project, 2016 April 26.
Artifacts from the Herring Run Archaeology Project, 2016 April 26.

Field Notes from Herring Run: What did we learn from an amazing week of excavations?

Thanks to Lisa Kraus and Jason Shellenhamer for this final update from the 2016 field season for the Herring Run Archaeology Project. You can find their updates on our blog, the project website, and on Facebook.

2016 April 30
2016 April 30

As we filled all our test units in yesterday, we were discussing all the things we’ve learned so far from our amazing week of excavations. Here are some highlights:

  1. We have the most incredible volunteers. This was an awful lot of hard work, and you guys were all so wonderful. We cannot do this without you, and we cannot thank you enough.
  2. The early Broad family occupation (1680-1742) is intact, and this is indeed where their house was located! We didn’t know this for sure until this week, and this is a huge discovery—the earliest and best-documented historic site in Baltimore City and County!
  3. We have significant evidence that the enslaved women and men who worked in the Eutaw manor house lived in the basement. We’ve discovered two probable hearths that would have provided heat and cooking fires, a subfloor pit that was used for food storage, and evidence of a laundry where Venus Tilghman worked. Finding evidence that relates specifically to Venus and Jeremiah Tilghman and the other enslaved people who made life at Eutaw possible has always been one of the major goals of the project.
  4. The Eutaw house had a tiled roof, decorative marble flourishes (a mantle or even a marble entryway), and elaborate window hardware.
  5. The house also had a finished basement! Many of the stone walls we uncovered this year still had plaster attached.
  6. In the yard, a path paved with river cobbles and pebbles led to the house, and much of the material excavated from the cellar during the house’s construction was used to build a terrace that surrounds the hill where the house was situated.

We also have plenty of new questions to guide our future work. So thank you again to all our volunteers, visitors and supporters for another successful year!

2016 April 30
2016 April 30
2016 April 30
2016 April 30

Field Notes from Herring Run: What can you learn from a builder’s trench?

Thanks to Lisa Kraus and Jason Shellenhamer for this update from day six and day seven of the Herring Run Archaeology Project. You can find their updates on our blog, the project website, and on Facebook. You can also subscribe to the project email list to read these posts in your inbox.

2016 April 29
2016 April 29

We’ve continued working on both the Eutaw manor house and the earlier part of the site over the last two days, and we’ve learned a great deal in a very short period of time.

In the manor house, we discovered a mysterious pit near the southwest corner of the foundation that contained two complete wine bottles and several pieces of eggshell.

2016 April 29
2016 April 29

In the northeast corner, we’ve identified a builder’s trench. This may not sound very exciting, but it’s a significant find: the builder’s trench usually contains only artifacts that date to the time of a building’s construction, which allows us to put a firm date on a structure. This builder’s trench contains artifacts identical to those we’ve found in the earliest part of the site, where the Broad family lived from circa 1680 to 1740! This reveals two important facts: the first is that the Broads may have lived where the Eutaw manor house once stood, and that their home was displaced when Eutaw was built. It also allows us to positively, indisputably identify the Eutaw manor house as the building that was present from the 1760s until 1865—no later house took its place.

2016 April 29
2016 April 29

In the earlier part of the site, we’ve identified a trash midden containing domestic trash dating to the time of the Broad occupation – 1680 to 1740. This has revealed important new clues about life in the early colonial period in the Baltimore area – a time period about which we know very, very little. Amidst a truly huge number of oyster shells, we found a delicate china teacup, a Chinese porcelain bowl, numerous pieces of stoneware tankards and jugs, wine bottle glass, and clay pipe stems.

2016 April 29
2016 April 29

Tomorrow is our public day, and the last day for excavation at this tremendously important site! We hope to see you at the Archaeology Open House tomorrow, April 30!

2016 April 29
2016 April 29

Field Notes from Herring Run: Uncovering a flagstone floor and a bunch of buttons

Thanks to Lisa Kraus and Jason Shellenhamer for this update from day 5 of the Herring Run Archaeology Project. You can find their updates on our blog, the project website, and on Facebook. You can also subscribe to the project email list to read these posts in your inbox.

2016 April 27
2016 April 27

Today we passed the halfway point of the 2016 field season, and the amazing discoveries continue. Building on the success from yesterday, we continued to explore the location of the earliest European occupation of the site.

2016 April 27
2016 April 27

We opened several more test units and, while we have not yet discovered any foundations or structural remains of the circa 1690 home of the Broad family, we continue to find the traces of their presence through the artifacts they left behind. The amazing find from that portion of the site was a beautiful french gunflint discovered by volunteers Ilka and Rosa.

2016 April 27
2016 April 27

Back at Eutaw House, we continue to complete excavating several unfinished units with the house’s cellar. Today we completed a unit near the northeast corner of the house where we discovered a large collection of bricks on Saturday. During the excavation today, we recovered a large collection of clothing and other personal items including beads, jewelry, and buttons of every make and type: bone, shell, glass, copper and iron. We also found a Belgian one cent piece that dates to 1845 and a pipe stem manufactured by Jan Prince the Netherlands from around the same time period.

2016 April 27
2016 April 27

At the bottom of the unit, we made yet another interesting discovery, a flagstone floor! This is the only section of the house to have a built floor. All other areas of the cellar contained only a dirt and bedrock bottom. The presence of the abundant brick, stone floor and variety of buttons leads us to think that this portion of the house may have served as the Eutaw house’s laundry and the workplace of several of the family’s enslaved men and women including Venus Tilghman.

2016 April 27
2016 April 27