Someone sat beside the warmth and glow of the fireplace in the stone house in the village of Morlatton in Amity Township and was sewing.
This was some time before the Revolutionary War, pins were inadvertently dropped and lost on the dirt floor. Some 100 years later, a button was lost in the same area.
Fast forward to a rainy April morning in 2022 and a group of volunteers dig up and sift through this same dirt in front of the fireplace in the Mouns Jones house and are delighted to find remnants of daily life in the 1700s.
Members of the Society for Pennsylvania Archeology Chapter 21 have been digging around the Douglassville site for 12 years, but didn’t start digging inside the house until January.
For Gene Delaplane, the most interesting thing to have been unearthed from inside the house, which dates from 1716 and is the oldest surviving house in Berks County, are the coins.
“We found five pieces dated between 1680 and 1731, plus one in 1807,” Delaplane said.
The oldest is believed to be a Charles II of Ireland halfpenny, according to research by members of SPA Chapter 21.
The 82-year-old former history teacher from Exton, Chester County, is excited about all the finds, from 18th and 19th century pottery shards to corroded straight pins.
“Although things like Gene talk about it, coins – super fancy, super sexy – are what everybody likes, as a professional archaeologist, the information that we can glean from the deposits that we dig, that can telling us the story of the people who live here, is the most interesting thing we have found,” said Richard White, 57, of Abington Township, Montgomery County.
His daily work is with AD Marble of King of Prussia, an environmental, cultural and engineering group.
“Just a quick look at the archaeological collections, we’re certainly getting some really good information about what I think is sort of the end of Mouns Jones occupation here: a lot of imported ceramics,” White said. “We also find evidence of possible architectural changes that occurred in the building itself, possibly in the late 18th, early 19th century.”
A major structural change the group has discovered in recent years is the location of the gate facing the river.
“We could tell inside and out and when we dug we found steps going up there that were more modern. The steps here were older,” Delaplane said pointing to the center of the House.
This discovery led to the reconstruction of the wall facing the Schuylkill River with a centered gate.
The building and the land belong to the Berks County Historic Preservation Trust.
The Trust, Friends of Hopewell, Amity Township and SPA Chapter 21 will hold a joint festival on July 4, Delaplane said.
“Amity Heritage Society is so lucky to have this site and then Chapter 21 to interpret what is here for us,” said Randy Van Fleet, 75, director of Amity Heritage Society. “We are consumers, they are producers. We take what they find and, as Rich said, we’re just as interested in their interpretation as we are in what they have in their hands.
“Every historical researcher seeks first-hand information. It’s the Holy Grail. It doesn’t get more first-hand than that. You just dropped it from your hand in 1725 and Gene picks it up and says, “Here’s what it probably is. ”
Van Fleet said that for the past 12 weeks, the heritage company has been running Friday features on Mouns Jones on its Facebook page.
“We try to give him some of the credit that he hasn’t gotten over the years,” Van Fleet said of the Swedish immigrant also known as Magnus Jonasson and Mounce Jones. “Now we have a chance to take it to the next level, and we’re very interested in every little thing and their interpretations of what it is so that we can help make it as accurate as possible in the future.”
Louis Farina, 87, of Landis Store in District Township was the senior member of SPA Chapter 21 on site April 6 and was shoveling dirt from a 5ft by 5ft square plot in the northeast corner of the House.
“I’ve been doing this for 50 years,” said Farina, who became interested in archeology when her son went to summer camp along the Delaware River and participated in digs at an Indian village there. -low.
Farina is a founding member of the Pennsylvania Archeological Society Chapter 21, which premiered on April 27, 1974 and is now officially known as John Shrader Chapter in honor of another founding member.
One of his proudest accomplishments at the Mouns Jones site was putting together the parts of a ceramic jug. The SPA group had inherited a box of artifacts dug up by Boy Scouts in 1957. He said he spent about three months putting the pieces back together.
“I had a little trouble with it because it’s not completely round as you can see which confused me and I thought maybe I wasn’t gluing it properly but eventually after having laid it on paper with the rims, I saw that it was not circular, “explained Farina. “It looks like the kind of jug they used in colonial times for milk, because it is glazed on the outside and glazed on the inside.”
Delaplane said SPA Chapter 21 had as many as 17 of its 24 members digging at the site on a Saturday. On April 6, six men were working on the site.
Kevin Keifrider, 55, an Amity Township supervisor, operated the sieve as Ken Biles, 76, another retired Amity Township teacher, dumped buckets of dirt into it. Biles then removed chunks of dirt from the found artifacts with a trowel and toothbrush. Ryan Whiteneck, 39, of Pottstown helped Farina shovel dirt from the ground into buckets and helped White record where items were found.
Eventually, the found items will be cleaned and cataloged by Rachael Smith, who earned a master’s degree in archeology from Indiana University in Pennsylvania in 2021.
Delaplane said she has worked with the group since she was in sixth grade.
To volunteer
Those interested in volunteering to dig at the Mouns Jones site and wishing to join the Society for Pennsylvania Archeology John Shrader Chapter 21 should call Gene Delaplane at 484-341-8775.
