#VAM2014 AN AMAZING ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY IN OLD TOWN! FREE ARCHAEOLOGICAL TOURS SATURDAY, MARCH 15 AT 10, 11, NOON, AND 1 PM RSVP 703.746.4399 AS SPACE IS LIMITED NORTHWEST CORNER OF CAMERON AND NORTH ROYAL STREETS SPONSORED BY ALEXANDRIA ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUM In the basement at the corner of 200 North Royal St. and 405 Cameron Street, Alexandria archaeologists have uncovered a large pit feature, almost certainly a truncated well, that appears to be associated with a tavern that once stood at the site. Whether the well was situated in the tavern basement, or located outside the building in the yard, has not been determined. In a 1760 rental advertisement, the “George Tavern” was described as two stories tall, with commodious rooms, three ground-floor fireplaces, and “a very good London Billiard table.” Some years later an Alexandria resident remembered the tavern in the pre-Revolutionary days as a “long, old, and very ugly wooden house, [with] one story and [a] garret” run by barkeep John Hucorn. The artifacts that we are recovering from the well may help us to determine whether it was an opulent drinking establishment or a seedy bar, or something more likely in between. One of Alexandria’s most renowned citizens, William Ramsay, is said to have owned the tavern in the 1760s and 1770s, operated as the Royal George, and it became a regular gathering place for patriots to assemble and hatch plans against British rule. A rather apocryphal story is told that not long after the Revolutionary War began, a rowdy crowd vandalized the tavern sign, changing its name to the George Tavern, and replacing the image of King George with that of General George Washington. By 1810 Francis Hucorn (perhaps John Hucorn’s son) ran the George Tavern and resided on the property. Hucorn died in 1813, and the building may have been damaged by a fire in 1815. Thus far, excavation of the first several feet of fill in the well has produced artifacts that date to the period 1810 to 1830, a period of time about which we only have fragmentary information so far. The artifacts may have been discarded into the well after the purported fire in 1815. Items include the types of artifacts that one might expect from a tavern: tankards, punch bowls, wine bottles, and a complete set of brass buttons from a man’s overcoat, as well as a badly decayed lady’s parasol. As we have excavated deeper into the well, the artifacts appear to date to an earlier period, perhaps to the time when George Washington once attended dances at the Royal George. This is one of the first and earliest deep well features to be professionally excavated in Old Town Alexandria. We expect that as we continue our work on it, it will have a doozey of a story to tell.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:28:23 +0000
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