The field phase of our Methodist church excavation is officially done. Yesterday, Hamline’s Grounds Services hauled back all our excavated dirt and filled in our trench. No backfilling by hand for us. My students will never truly appreciate their luck in missing this traditional part of archaeology.
St. Paul weather at 3:53 PM (Overcast 37 °F / 3 °C)
Today’s cold weather was well timed. No one in the class seemed disappointed to finish the excavations on a day when the blustery north winds made it feel almost like winter. Personally I like working outside when November turns stormy. It makes coming into a warm house (or a warm lab) feel so good.
I’m very pleased with our accomplishments. Although we didn’t find the church’s organ, we did discover a few new things about Hamline village history. Our lab phase will bring these discoveries into focus, but the stained glass and other architectural details are the most obvious of our finds. The project was also a success as a community archaeology dig and, at least so far, as an educational opportunity. Its great to see how far my students have progressed as field archaeologists in such a short time.
A collapse of our trench wall created the greatest challenge to our research goals. I almost gave up on trying to reach the church basement.
Stained glass shards found along the church foundation.
We’re finding a lot of small shards of colored glass. We believe these are from the rose windows. The interesting aspect is the diversity of colors - mostly greens and yellows, but also blue and amber colors. I just held them up to the sunlight a few minutes ago as I photographed some of them for this blog. While snapping this picture I realized the symbolism. After 80 years of darkness, sunlight is again shining through the church’s stained glass windows.
Slowly, very slowly, the church ruin is coming into focus. After six weeks of digging (well, really we’ve worked about 45 hours on site) we are starting to see the scene of what remained in 1926 after the demolition work. We see sections of wall pushed over and bricks strewn about. Everywhere we’re finding limestone fragments.
Wow, what a beautiful fall day! Plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind. The leaves were swirling around us and filling the pits as we dug. It felt really good to be outside doing archaeology on a day like today.
We continue to uncover more of the foundation. It has emerged as a substantial wall, over 50 cm (2 feet) thick. We’re also starting to hit rubble inside the building including small fragments of wood and lots of nails. I view these finds
as a positive sign - that we’re closing in on the church interior and hopefully a glimpse of what might have survived the fire and demolition.
One of last week’s highlights was being joined in our excavation by some fifty 6th graders from Hancock Elementary school. It was a great experience to work side by side with such enthusiastic kids. As expected, we found some nails, ceramics, clinker, bricks, and lots of worms.
The only glitch in the entire day was when we lost Rayna. I never did get the entire story, but apparently one of the teacher’s aides thought Rayna was a 6th grader and
made her go back to Hancock with the rest of the class. We eventually straightened out the mix-up and had Rayna returned to us. To avoid similar problems in the future, we’re asking Rayna to carry some form of ID whenever we have young kids on the site.
Rayna happy to return to our class
A drenching rain brought today’s excavation to a screeching halt. I wasn’t too disappointed, though, since we were near the end of our class period and we’d been very productive before the rain. We are now largely done with the public component of our project and really focused on the research goals. Our units inside the church
are down 80 cm (about 2 ½ feet) with no sign of any building debris. We need to dig fast and furious if we’re to get deep enough to really evaluate what is left inside the basement.
Our trench extension has uncovered a little more of the foundation, but it’s jumbled and not in line with our first section. It’s a little frustrating to be so close to seeing a longer stretch of foundation, but having to wait until Thursday’s class before we can dig again. Archaeologists always say that our profession requires patience, but only working 3 hours a day, two days a week makes for slow progress even by my standards. This nasty rainy, cold and dreary weather worries me a bit. Will winter wait a few more weeks so we can finish the dig, or is time running out?
Our Homecoming open dig was a lot of fun. Our timing was fortunate,
with one of the nicest days we’ve seen this week. I was impressed by our returning volunteers - they knew what to do and started working as soon as they arrived. I had it easy. I just went around talking to people and everyone else did all the hard work. Public archaeology certainly has its advantages.
Maya had the find of the day - a metal enamel cup, slightly crushed but otherwise intact. She found it in a thin lens of ash and coal. The lens appears to be a trash dump, presumably from a coal burning stove. Stratigraphically it post-dates the church, but it indicates some refuse disposal was incorporated into the fill over the church.
It was a great day for Hamline area historians. We had a lot of conversations about the early church history, local architecture, and future sites to dig. All the possibilities are intriguing, I just need to convince Hamline that I should start offering Excavating Hamline History every semester instead of every other year.
We’re expanding our excavations. At the church site we have added a “T” extension on the west end of our trench that will expose a longer section of the church’s foundation. We want to better document the building’s location and construction. We also are hoping to find more artifacts - especially
anything with architectural details. We’ve started to on-cover a mass of fragmented red brick, mortar, and wood. It’s all in a jumble as if it was thrown up against the outer wall during demolition. This pile of debris is important because it indicates we are close to the original ground surface. Everything we find in this strata are likely to be objects from the time of the church.
We’re also expanding the locus of our excavations to include the red brick house across the street. This colonial-style house was built in 1884 and is 
amongst the earliest houses still remaining in the Hamline neighborhood. Assuming the house occupants were home in December 1925, they would have been some of our best witnesses to the fire at the Methodist church. We’ll be digging in the backyard and hoping to find features and artifacts from the early days of this house’s existence. This dig will be our first exploration of a domestic site. The contrast of this excavation with our digs at institutional sites (the church and the university) should provide a broader understanding of life in Hamline village 100 years ago.
We found the church! At least we found a possible 
foundation located where the west wall of the church should be. It’s not as substantial a construction as we expected - so we have a lot of questions to answer and more digging to do. Archaeology almost always works this way. You may or may not find what you are looking for, but you always end up with more questions than when you started.
Natalie documenting the wall. It doesn’t look like much in this picture, but it is the linear mass in the foreground with a limestone block on top of it.
We had a very nice turnout for our first open dig. About 30 people showed up - including some enthusiastic kids. The sun made for a gorgeous autumn day - perfect for digging, especially for drying our muddy soils. The gravel fill in the second level (10-20 cm below surface), however, made the digging tough. I didn’t hear any complaints. Possibly the cookies and apple cider helped
compensate for the sore trowel hands.
Our finds today were pretty sparse. Among the most interesting to me is the scatter of ash and coal, probably the refuse from a coal burning stove or furnace. We need to find out when people in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood stopped using coal, but this material suggests our fill comes from a site area dating to the mid-20th century or earlier.
The biggest question in my mind right now is if we should switch to shoveling out the fill. We could dig faster and get to the church foundation quicker. It’s a tempting thought.
BAG #001 - The first bag of excavated artifacts from our 2007 dig.
We excavated the first level at the Hamline Methodist Church site today. We’re digging through a layer of rocky fill with a light scatter of 20th century artifacts. Some nails, slate shingle fragments, a limestone suggest we have building demolition debris, but are these from the church or some other structure? We need to keep digging to find our answer.
Ryan made the find of the day - a white ceramic sherd with a prominent maker’s mark. It’ll be interesting to see if we can identify the mark.
This Saturday is our first open dig. Stop by between 9 AM and 3 PM if you want to check out what’s happening.
Ryan’s find of the day
Today we started the Hamline Methodist Church excavation. We managed to strip the sod from our first trench in between rain showers this afternoon.
There’s a lot of gravel and rock immediately below the sod layer. We also noted a few shards of bottle glass and a lot of worms. The weather report for Thursday looks decent - so with a little luck we should make good progress.
Saturday (Sept. 22nd) from 9 AM until 3 PM is our open dig for the Hamline neighborhood. Everyone is encouraged to stop by to see what we’re finding. You can even help dig or screen if you don’t mind getting muddy.
In this 2004 photo my students are uncovering the outer wall of Hamline’s original Hall of Science. I wonder will we find an intact wall during our church excavation?
Fall semester began last week, so we are about to start our excavation of the Hamline Methodist Church site. We plan to lay out our excavation grid on Tuesday, then start the actual dig on Thursday. I admit I’m a tiny bit worried. Usually I would have tested a site before starting a major dig. That way I’d know something about the soil stratigraphy and the site’s preservation. I’d have some clue as to what is below the sod.
This post is for Hamline students interested in registering for my fall class (ANTH 3980: Excavating Hamline’s History).
This class is a unique opportunity to participate both on an archaeological excavation and in an interdisciplinary and collaborative project. It’s an interdisciplinary class because of the students. Each of you is asked to contribute to the overall project goals based on either your major studies or other areas of interest and expertise that you have. Your contribution may be in a research area - where you apply your research skills to questions about the site, or the artifacts, or the historical background. The last time I taught this course we excavated Hamline University’s original Hall of Science, a three story brick building constructed in 1887. I had a chemistry major that analyzed the chemical composition of the building’s bricks, a history major that collected oral history accounts from alumni and faculty, an economics major that analyzed 125
year-old bills and receipts from the building’s construction, and an archaeology student who analyzed the distribution of glass artifacts recovered in our excavations.
Other students contributed by presenting and interpreting our project in various media including designing a web site, filming a video, writing a play, printing posters, and putting together an exhibit. We also had an education major that brought over Hancock 6th graders so they could experience archaeology first hand. Our philosophy major examined the ethics of archaeology. And our environmental studies major looked at the intersection of environmental protection and cultural resource management laws.
The point is, you can pursue just about any idea you want. What you need is an ability to collaborate on other people’s projects and an enthusiasm for interdisciplinary archaeology. If this sounds interesting then send me a brief email outlining what ways you could contribute to this fall’s class. Also tell me a little bit about yourself (including your major and year). Finally, I would like to know why you are interested
in joining the class and what you hope to gain from your participation. Make sure you look at my other posts tagged as “Hamline History” to get a better idea of this year’s excavation plans.
If you take this class be prepared for a challenge, some fun, and a non-traditional educational experience.
On December 26, 1925 the Hamline United Methodist Church was consumed by fire. It is believed to have started when materials from a Christmas celebration were left on a basement furnace and accidentally set ablaze. The building was a total loss. Eyewitnesses describe the eerie beauty of the rose windows lit by the flames within, and the almost human groan as the floor gave way and the organ crashed into the basement.
Despite their loss, church leaders and congregation members immediately made plans to rebuild. They cleared the remaining construction debris during the
spring of 1926 and at the same time began laying the foundation for the new church. They decided to set the new church back from the street. The old building site, as a result, was filled-in and then left alone. These two factors, the tragic fire and the relocation of the church building, combine to create an archaeological site of great research potential.
We had another meeting of the Hamline history group this week. This time we had several historians, archivists, and professors - so it was a lively meeting (that is if you find old photographs and railroad records exciting)!
I see this collaboration as having incredible potential. I’m already lining up interested students for next fall’s class (Excavating Hamline’s History). We are still hoping to find one of the original train depots for an excavation, but we also talked about some other potential sites. Given all the possibilities, I am convinced we are going to excavate a very significant historical site.
Phil Reinhardt, of the Hamline Midway History Corp, has added a nice section to their website describing the project and some of the research that his group has completed. I particularly like this quote from a 1901 traveler to Hamline describing the trip by streetcar from St. Paul.
Arrival - Monday morning, September 6, 1901, marks the moment of my introduction to Minnesota. From Vernon McCombs, one of the student managers of the college bookstore, I had received instructions how to reach the Hamline district from the Union Depot. … [The Hamline-Jackson streetcar] was distinctly sui generis, functioning, as it seemed, like many a homo sapiens, with a minimum of reserves and a maximum of noise. Tradition has it that the passengers got off frequently and helped the car up the inclines on Lexington and Minnehaha near their point of intersection. Of course there was no car line on Snelling nor was the street paved. Both came many years later. (Dr. James S. King, “The Middle Years and Now”)
To any Hamline students reading this blog, now is a great time to get involved in this project. There are opportunities to help with the archival research, collect oral histories, and this spring, to help with the archaeological testing of possible site locations.
I just finished a meeting with Candy Hart, Hamline’s archivist, and Phil Reinhardt of the Hamline-Midway History Corps, where we discussed starting a ”Hamline Village” history project. What we are envisioning is an ongoing collaboration between the University, the community, and local schools to document the history of our neighborhood. We would like to combine archival research, oral history, and archaeology to investigate the Hamline area landscape, how it began and how evolved.
Phil is very interested in the train depots. As he sees it, these structures are the “genesis” for the entire neighborhood. The original depot was built around 1874 near the Snelling and Taylor Avenue intersection. A second depot was built sometime around 1886 and located near where Pierce Butler is today.
One idea we are considering is to try and locate one of these depot sites so that we can have an archaeological dig at the site next fall as part of a course I will be offering called ”Excavating Hamline’s History”. We plan to spend the next couple of months gathering more information on the depots. Anyone interested in this project can come to our next meeting on 24 January at 9:30 AM.
The Hamline-Midway History Corp has a great website with lots of neighborhood history materials including some fascinating historical maps. This map from their site shows a dot where the 1874 depot was located. It would be an exciting dig if we could find the piece of ground that matches the dot.
Close up of 1874 map showing depot north of “College Place”. From Hamline-Midway History Corp website.
