Burle's Town Land (18AN826)

Summary

The Burle's Town Land Site (18AN826) is located within the 17th-century settlement of Providence in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Providence had been settled primarily by a group of Puritans invited by Lord Baltimore to Maryland in 1649. The colony’s Act Concerning Religion, passed that same year, guaranteed that the Puritans would not be harassed for their religious beliefs as they had been in Virginia. While the relationship between the newly arrived settlers at Providence and the Maryland government started out well, however, by the mid-1650s, many of the settlers were in open conflict with Lord Baltimore. Baltimore’s Protestant governor, William Stone, led a military force against the Puritans at Providence in March 1655, but his troops were soundly defeated.

Burle's Town Land was patented in 1662 by Robert and Mary Burle, who lived at the site until his death in 1676. Archaeological evidence, however, suggests the site may have been occupied as early as 1649. At Burle’s death, the land passed to his youngest daughter, Rebecca, who married Humphrey Boone sometime before 1680. At that time, Rebecca left the property to move to her husband’s land in the north end of the county. Archaeological evidence suggests that the site was occupied through the 1680s, possibly by Mary Burle.

Burle was a government functionary (including surveyor) for both Providence and Anne Arundel County, keeping land records and accounts. The Burles also wrote an important letter to the fathers of the Puritan Church in New England in the 1660s, asking for guidance about the teachings of fellow Puritan William Durand. Durand preached a type of Puritanism known as “Antinomianism,” somewhat similar to Quakerism. Archaeologist Al Luckenbach believes that the letter suggests some internal division among the Puritans at Providence.

Archaeological Investigations

Burle's was first identified by an avocational archaeologist sometime before 1991, when the site was brought to the attention of Al Luckenbach. From 1992 until 1995, the site was tested on an intermittent basis by Luckenbach and his colleagues at the Anne Arundel County Department of Planning and Code Enforcement. A total of 231 5-by-5-foot squares were excavated, revealing both plowed and unplowed midden deposits. Soil was screened through ¼-inch hardware cloth and all artifacts were retained. An 18th-century cemetery overlies a large portion of the site; these graves were left undisturbed. Forty-one features dating to the 17th century were identified, mapped, and sampled.

Although records indicate that Burle did not patent the property until 1662, archaeological evidence (especially artifacts) suggests the site may date as early as 1649.

Excavations revealed an earthfast building measuring 20 by 60 feet and apparently divided into two sections. Luckenbach believes that the two sections are contemporary; each was heated by an internal fireplace placed somewhat centrally along the building’s sidewalls. Artifacts indicate that the building had glazed windows, decorative yellow fire bricks, and Dutch tin-glazed and lead-glazed tiles. Analysis of the distribution of the pantiles at the site suggests that at least the northern end of the structure had a tile roof. Surprisingly, very little plaster was recovered, although lathe-impressed daub and lathe nails suggest the structure was lathed.

A second ancillary structure that does not appear to have been heated probably stood just south of the larger building.

Artifacts

More than 60,000 artifacts were recovered from the Burle's Town Land Site, including a range of architectural artifacts previously described above. Other materials included ceramics, glass, tobacco pipes, various metal hardware and personal objects, lead shot and gunflints, a small amount of Native American pottery and debitage, and animal bone.

Among the approximately 22,000 ceramic sherds found at the site were numerous examples of Rhenish stoneware, tin-glazed earthenware, North Devon gravel-tempered and sgraffito earthenwares, Staffordshire and North Italian slipwares, Italian sgraffito ware, Borderware, Midlands Purple ware, and Iberian storage jar. Smaller amounts of porcelain and English brown and white salt-glazed stonewares were also found.

More than 15,000 tobacco pipe fragments were recovered from Burle's; 84 percent consisted of white clay, while 16 percent were terra cotta; eight fragments were made of stone. Analysts identified a minimum number of 555 white pipes and 109 terra cotta ones. The tobacco pipe fragments recovered from the site have been studied in considerable detail, and the results of that research can be found in Sharpe, Cox, and Kille (2002). White pipes include both English (mostly Bristol) and Dutch forms.

The terra cotta pipe fragments are also of considerable interest. Only a very few fragments appear to have been manufactured either by Indians or by persons using Indian decorative techniques (e.g., running deer motif). The majority appear to have been produced in European molds, likely by Providence planter and pipemaker Emanuel Drue, who is known to have operated a pipe kiln at nearby Swan Cove. Indeed, one of the decorative motifs recovered on terra cotta fragments from Burle's consisted of an unusual nested dot, diamond, and circle design. The stamp tool used for producing this mark was subsequently found at Drue’s Swan Cove kiln site. Another decorative motif has been attributed to the maker Luckenbach and Taft Kiser call “Bookbinder,” who was working in southside Virginia (the area of Virginia that sent the largest numbers of Puritans to Maryland in 1649). Bookbinder pipes have been found at Greenspring Plantation (near Jamestown, Virginia), Nominy Plantation in Virginia’s Northern Neck, Pope’s Fort (St. Mary’s City), and the Old Chapel Field Site in St. Inigoes, Maryland.

More then 11,000 metal objects were recovered, with more than 90 percent consisting of wrought nails. Other artifacts included bale seals, buckles, furniture hardware and iron locks, horse furniture, smoker’s companions, straight pins, and curtain rings.

References

Luckenbach, Al. 1995. Providence: The History and Archaeology of Anne Arundel County’s First European Settlement. The Maryland State Archives and the Maryland Historical Trust, Crownsville, MD.

Sharpe, Shawn, Jason D. Moser, and John Kille. 2002. “Burle's Town Land (ca. 1649-1676): A Marked Abundance of Pipes.” In Al Luckenbach, C. Jane Cox, and John Kille, eds., The Clay Tobacco-Pipe in Anne Arundel County, Maryland (1650-1730), pp. 28-39. Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation, Annapolis, MD.

Further Information on the Collection

The Burle's Town Land site is owned and curated by Anne Arundel County’s Lost Towns Project at its offices in Annapolis, Maryland. For additional information on this site, please contact Anne Arundel County’s Lost Towns Project, Office of Environmental and Cultural Resources, Anne Arundel County, 2664 Riva Road, Annapolis, MD 21401 or contact the Archaeology Program directly at 410-222-7441.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture

Keywords

Temporal Coverage

Calendar Date: 1650 to 1689

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Project Director(s): Al Luckenbach