Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Groundbreaking ancient DNA research and approximately 60,000 artifacts are providing invaluable insights into enslaved and immigrant life at Catoctin Furnace in Western Maryland, the site of an ironworking village in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ancient DNA is linking enslaved to their living descendants while European immigrant lifeways are being revealed and compared through the analysis of worker home assemblages. While the lives of all workers operated within parameters set by the owners, this research highlights important disparities and differences among the diverse population. Links to African and European ancestral locales are revealed and examined. Drawing from over 50 years of above and below ground archaeology, this session reflects on the experiences and the legacy of the early industrial workforce and the application of groundbreaking technologies to revealing past lives.

Other Keywords
Ceramics • Vernacular Architecture • Iron • Food Procurement • Dendrochronology • Tobacco • Diet • Furnace • Labor • Dna

Geographic Keywords
Mid-Atlantic • MID ATLANTIC • Mid-Atlantic United States

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)

  • Documents (6)
Documents
  • Devil in the Details: Social Drugs Among the Workers at Catoctin Furnace (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Katz. Robert Wanner.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Recent excavations at two worker houses at Catoctin Furnace in Western Maryland generated many tobacco and alcohol related artifacts. The disparity in assemblages between the two houses appears to reflect economic and social class distinctions within the industrial village, even among workers in...

  • Food In The Furnace (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail G Kennedy.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Two worker houses at Catoctin Furnace, the Forgeman’s House (18FR1043) and Hoke House (18FR1195) yielded dietary remains in the form of floral and faunal material. This analysis evaluates a sample of these dietary data alongside transaction records from the local store ledger. The results of this...

  • The Kids are Alright: The Experiences of Children in Catoctin Furnace, ca. 1776 - 1910 (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry A Kahl. Cassie E Poell.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The experiences of children within the archaeological record are largely absent. This paper seeks to investigate the lives of children within Catoctin Furnace in Thurmont, Maryland from the late 18th to the beginning of the 20th century, through the examination of two sites within the furnace...

  • Painted, Printed, Preserved: A Comparative Analysis of Historical Ceramics in a Nineteenth-century Company Town (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul F. Albert Jr..

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Phase III archaeological excavations at the Forgeman’s House and Hoke House sites in the Catoctin Furnace Historic District (Thurmont, Maryland) have yielded significant, contemporaneous ceramics assemblages that provide insight into the lived experiences of early nineteenth century furnace...

  • The Tree-Ring Dating of Ironworkers’ Houses at Catoctin Furnace (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael J. Worthington. Jane I. Seiter.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The village of Catoctin Furnace in Thumont, Maryland, contains a notable number of extant workers’ cottages built during the iron furnace’s working life from 1776 to 1903. Although by the late 1800s approximately eighty tenant houses were known to exist in the area surrounding the furnace, today...

  • Using DNA To Connect Living People To Enslaved Ironworkers At Catoctin Furnace (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Anderson Comer. Henry Louis Gates. Jr.. David Reich. Douglas Owsley. Kari Bruwelheide.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In August 2023, “The Genetic Legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace” was published in Science, demonstrating that it is possible to wed the power of massive direct-to-consumer ancestry databases with ancient DNA technology by using the first reliable approach for identifying...