Category: Artifact of the Day

After many years of good luck, this season we seem to be plagued by rain! Depending on what we are doing we can often work through rain, but in this case if there is a lot of recording, the paper forms don’t survive very well! You can of course get special paper and notebooks that you can write on when wet, but actually in CRM work, rain is often a cause to call the day. Digging in mud means you can’t really see what you are doing as you are digging, and screening mud is also not much fun.

This morning we decided to start in the classroom since it looked like the rain would be over by first break. James went over planning and profiling, as we are getting to that point of the excavation. We also looked at stratigraphy and Harris matrices. After that, some students stayed with me to look at material culture for a little now that we have been finding artifacts, and the rest went with James for more mapping and survey instruction.

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After morning break, we met on site when it promptly started to drizzle again. We could see a clearing heading towards us, so we decided to show Stage 2 fieldwalking to the students. Normally the field would have to be ploughed, but we just wanted to give them a taste of what fieldwalking is, especially if any of our students get hired on as field techs for the rest of the summer once they have completed their field school!

This took us to lunch time, so we broke for an hour and then reconvened back on site to do some digging as the weather had improved. We are finally finding artifacts, now that we have dug down through the sterile overburden that was added to the site some time after 2023, so that means back to screening!

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We haven’t found much yet, which makes selecting something for artifact of the day a little difficult! Today we had three finds which the students wanted to share with you, as equal billing.

First up is a bullet casing, which is a 22 LR (long rifle) or a 22 long. Both used the same size casing, the difference is the bullet size. We know it had been fired since there is no bullet, and also there is a mark of the firing pin on the base, so we can’t tell which it was. The 22 LR was more common than the 22 long, so it is probably that.

Our casing has a D headstamp which tells us it was made by the Dominion Cartridge Company of Montreal. It appears to have a tinned finish. Dominion first started making .22s in the 1880s, and up until World War II, I believe they were the only company making .22 rounds in Canada. In 1928 they became part of C-I-L (Canadian Industries Limited). I was able to find a later example of these cartridges online after Dominion became C-I-L with the same headstamp (picture lower right), but I can’t date ours for certain as it looks like this particular cartridge was made for a long time.

The 22LR is the most common type of ammunition sold today, as it is useful for hunting, killing vermin, and sport. Perhaps one of the farmers that lived on this parcel was protecting his livestock one day! We do know from past census records that this parcel had sheep, pigs and cows, as well as arable land and an orchard area.

Speaking of livestock, we have finally found some bone on the site, representing some of the animals the inhabitants of this parcel ate. Today we found a longbone shaft fragment, part of a vertebra, and a distal epiphysis (suggesting this was a young not-yet-adult) from what I think is a pig radius. We need to clean them up and compare to our department’s zooarch collection created by department member Dr Eugène Morin.

Our last artifact to showcase today is part of the base of a glass bottle. This was probably some kind of medicine bottle, and the shape suggests it is either rectangular or oval (a more rounded rectangle verging to actual oval shape, these terms are more an approximation as opposed to hard geometry!). This shape was very commonly used by druggists between the late 1870s until the 1920s. They often had proprietary embossing on the flat panels of the bottle. We only have a small part of the base, but it is enough for me to know it was a mouth blown bottle, possibly from a dip mould or probably in a cup bottom mould as that is the most common way these types of bottles were produced (I need to clean it and see if there are mould seams on the heel!). If we had proprietary embossing we could learn when the company existed along with more clues to manufacturing if we had more of the bottle or a finish.

I am quite fond of medicine bottles, it is interesting to track all the various remedies that existed for various complaints, especially those that are basically an approved “medicinal” way to consume some alcohol to take the edge off after an exhausting day of running a farmstead!

The weather reports say it is going to rain steadily all day tomorrow, so we have decided to give the students a day off to study for their upcoming S&G test. See you on Thursday!

A brief but very intense storm rushed through at the end of the day yesterday, and the high winds mangled our sun canopy tents. The first order of business while we unloaded the trailer was to try and duct tape and bend the metal frames back so they could be somewhat useful still. Because of the heavy rain, site was extremely muddy this morning, we all got an extra workout from the inches of mud sticking to the bottom of our boots. The Raccoons and the Earthworms worked on excavating, while the Rats worked on finishing up their survey exercises.

It was a really pleasant day, and the excavation crews moved a lot of earth! We were able to determine via strategic sondage units that because of some fill brought in at some point, the current ground surface is a good 15cm or so higher than when we left the site in 2023. So this means we can shovel through the overburden a little more expediently and hopefully get down to the cultural layers that interest us more quickly. We relocated an old feature from our previous excavation which is helping us to home in on the rubble pile. We will be moving the operation area a bit more south to capture it and maybe finally satisfying our questions! The midden area is still a bit of a mystery, but by taking it down a little deeper we should have a better idea what is going on there tomorrow.

Here are some photos from the day:

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Our artifact of the day came from what we think is nearby to a midden area of the site. It’s a clay pipe bowl, with the initials TD impressed into the clay while it was still wet before firing. We’ve covered clay pipes before, but let’s explore TD pipes in a little more detail.

While smoking is a cultural practice that is on the decline now that we know about its various negative health effects, men, women, and children all enjoyed the soothing properties and sweet taste of tobacco by smoking it in mass-produced white clay pipes. Fancy pipes would have been made one at a time, carved by craftsmen out of meerschaum or brier wood, but clay pipes allowed mass manufacture and distribution of cheap and cheerful pipes that would be purchased one or two at a time and discarded after a couple uses.

The mysteries surrounding the initials “TD” on pipes have been of interest to many people over the years, and one of the first published articles attempting to address the mystery was written by Alfred Hopkins in the November 1937 printing of Antiques magazine. Hopkins ambitiously tried to ascribe the TD to the first words of the c. AD 500 hymn “Te Deum” (Te Deum laudamus), but also proposed it might represent a trademark to identify a quality product. At the time this article was written, no sources had been found to suggest potential candidates for pipe makers with the initials TD. Once historical records became more accessible, including through digitisation, we are able to trace the TD pipe in a little more detail and propose a vector for their creation and popularity explosion.

Current scholarship suggests that TD pipes were first made by Thomas Dormer, Sr., who was a pipe maker in London. The interesting link here is that the Dormer pipeworks had various agreements with the Hudson’s Bay Company to sell pipes between 1748-1770. HBC records also mention that Dormer went into business with his son Thomas Jr. for a brief time from 1754-1756, ending with the senior Dormer’s death. Thomas Jr. continued on with exporting pipes to North America until his death in 1771. By selling through the vast distribution networks of the Hudson’s Bay Company, TD pipes became a familiar sight in North America. The TD mark was plagiarised after Thomas Dormer Jr.’s death, reproduced in likely hundreds of styles by makers in England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, and Canada throughout the mid-eighteenth century all the way to the 20th century. This extreme popularity of the TD mark led to these types of pipes becoming genericised, similar to how Kleenex is often used as a term for any brand of tissue, and the name Q-tip instead of cotton swabs.

While some of the TD marks pipes look quite fancy, with the TD located in a cartouche or decorated with stars or foliage, our pipe bowl is very plain, which suggests it comes from the last half of the 19th century. I guess this is probably a Bannerman or a Henderson pipe, but that is a hunch from seeing similar impressed serif TDs on pipes from these manufacturers. Since we don’t have the part of the pipe with the maker’s mark, it will remain a mystery to us!

It’s hard to believe that our field school is half over already! It was cold and damp this morning, but we tried to keep as warm as we could by moving some dirt. James ordered everyone pizza for lunch (hooray!!), and we had Dr Jennifer Moore, the Anthropology Department Chair drop by today to see how the excavations are progressing.

After lunch, we started backfilling the two completed units that have been excavated and recorded (elevations taken, planned, and profiled). Many hands make light work and it is always surprising to see how quickly a unit that was painstakingly excavated over days can be filled back up with dirt.

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Jax, Xander, and Amelie finally got to the dark artifact rich layer in their midden unit today, and immediately had some interesting finds, including the find of the day, a timber stamp or brand.

The Timber Marking Act was passed in 1870, requiring all logging firms to register a unique identifying mark and stamp this on the cut logs. Over 2200 timber marks were registered between 1870 and 1990. Failure to mark logs resulted in a $50 fine, and wrongly applying a mark claiming someone else’s logs incurred a fine of up to $100.

In 1874, the Ministry of Agriculture published “The Lumberman’s Timber Mark Guide“, to help lumber companies overcome problems of identification. It included pictures of stamps for all registered lumber companies, and a complete index. The preface concluded that “without a correct book of reference, much trouble and loss must be sustained from ignorance of the Registered Marks by which the timber and lumber can be identified, besides incurring the risk of infringing on those already adopted and registered.”

I found three marks listed, all from 1872 and 1873 for Boyd, Smith, and Co. who purchased the Nassau Mills in September 1872. These are obviously not our mark, but they come from the first version of this company.

I did find another timber mark book, written by Diane Aldred, called Registered timber marks of Eastern Canada from 1870 to 1984. The Trent library has a copy, so I will have to check that out next week and see if we can find our mark reproduced there with its registry date. As I didn’t have immediate access to this book, I decided to poke through the Peterborough newspaper records I have and I found enough mentions that I think I can narrow down the date of this mark a bit.

So as I mentioned above, the sale of the Nassau Mills to Gardiner Boyd, Alexander Smith, and James M. Irwin took place in September 1872. Irwin seems to have been a bit of a silent partner at the outset, but he is listed in the parcel roll as one of the purchasers.

In May 1876 there was a notice published that Alexander Smith of Boyd, Smith & Co. was injured/ill, but expected to be able to attend to business in a few days. There was also an article talking about an insurance payout to Boyd, Smith & Co. for death of a valuable horse [was this the cause of the injury?]; and some ads announcing timber for sale at the Boyd, Smith & Co. lumber yard.

In August 1876 there are ads for lumber yard of Boyd, Smith & Co., and a mention that A. Smith, Esq. of the firm of Boyd, Smith & Co. has been to the Eastern Province and sea side for the benefit of his health, and was expected home the next week. He appears to have left the company some time around then, perhaps due to lingering health issues?

The first specific mention of Irwin & Boyd I could find in the newspapers is September 1879. There is an article detailing the proceedings of police court, where enlarged cases against mill owners for depositing sawdust and mill refuse in the river came up for further hearing. Irwin & Boyd are mentioned as being fined $20 and $2.50 costs for breach of Navigation Laws, and also fined $5.00 and $2.50 costs for depositing sawdust into the river. So at least in 1879, there is mention of Irwin & Boyd as operating the mills, which matches our I & B stamp!

The last mention of Irwin & Boyd I can find in the newspapers is January 1882, newspaper articles and ads only speak of “Irwin’s mill” or “Irwin lumber sale” after this date. Presumably at this point that stamp was retired and discarded as it was no longer current.

So we can narrow this stamp to approximately 1879 to 1882 based on the newspaper records. I am curious to see if the mark is in that timber mark book!

Our lovely new signs are up, welcome to everyone who has stopped by the blog to see what the heck is going on behind the Trent sign!

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Site visitors today included Dr Hugh Elton, Michael Obie and Dan Smith. Michael and Dan make appearances in the 2017 and 2018 and 2023 seasons of our project!

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“Hey, we found a ring!”

We had found one other ring at this site before, so I headed over to the midden crew check it out. Immediately through the dirt I could tell it was silver, with some sort of design on the front and when I turned it over there were some hallmarks suggesting a silver piece as well. A careful wipe down revealed:

The front was fascinating, an icon of a logging saw, the initials A. P., and underneath a felling axe. How cool is that, to have a piece of jewelry that directly reflects the mill activities, located in a domestic context from a house on the property of a major sawmill complex?

So cool!!

I started with the hallmarks, as they usually give you an assay mark (city based), maker’s initials, an assay date (initial letter in a particular font), and a location (city mark) where it was made, and maybe an indication if duty was paid (portrait). But it was puzzling to me, as although I could see three marks, they didn’t fit this model. The lion passant suggested an assay in London, UK, but why were there two of them? The centre mark was covered in dirt, and even when cleaned it was hard to see with the naked eye., and appeared to be two letters instead of a single date code.

I couldn’t wait until the end of the day, when I could finally peek through a microscope and see the initials “J.O”. A couple of British silver hallmark sites on the web suggested this could be a J. Oliver in Clerkenwell, London. But I was still thrown by the weirdness of the hallmark elements. Then James reminded me about pseudo-hallmarks. The Canadian silver market did not create a standardised hallmark systems like the UK one until 1985, however, it is evident that the idea of a silver object needing to have British-style hallmarks to make it “real” did certainly apply. So our marks suggest a domestically-made ring that needed some trappings of British silver.

So this is likely why we have a kind of bizarre set of hallmarks which on first glance seem real, but have no real meaning behind them. I did a quick search to see if there were any 19th century Canadian silversmiths who used the initials J.O and found a couple potential names mentioned (John O’Gorman/Toronto, John O’Donahoe/Quebec, and John Oakes/Montreal) but couldn’t find any more beyond their names — that might be a future research project.

So once that area of investigation has come to an end, the next step was to see if we could figure out who A.P. was! It seemed reasonable to assume that this ring was worn by someone who was involved in the lumber industry in some way. My first thought was to scour the city and county directories but then I remembered as part of the background research for our Nassau Mills report, I had already done a partial listing of census and directory research I had summarised to list possible inhabitants of the parcel of land. At the time we wrote the license report for our excavations, we were excited to maybe link Charles Perry to the beginning of the life of this house, but never did we dream that we would be able to link to someone else in the past!

One name immediately jumped out at me, Albert Parker, who in the 1891 census is 44 years old and listed as living in Smith Township (check) in a wooden 1.5 story 4 room house (seems plausible) with his wife Margaret (34), son William Allan (11), and daughters Ethel I. (8) and Olive R. (5). So the fact that we have some toys in the midden is supported by the census recording children in a household. This is all great so far.

Albert’s occupation is listed as sawmill labourer (check!!). The other families in the 1891 census list that cluster before and after the Parker family also have some members listed as sawmill labourers, and no one else has the initials A.P. We know there were at least four dwelling houses on the parcel, so it is possible that in the 1880s-1890s, our house was occupied by Albert Parker and family, and at some point he lost his silver ring.

I decided to see if I could trace Albert’s life back through the census and if we could learn a little more about him. A brief foray suggests:

In 1881, Albert is 34, Methodist, married to Margaret (25), and they have a son, Allen (1). I found a listing for Varnum in the 1887 Farmers’ and Classified Business Directory as a tenant on Concession 18, Lot 27, Smith.

The 1891 census I have detailed above.

The 1897 Farmer’s and Business Directory suggests that Albert moves away from Nassau Mills in the late 1890s, as his address is listed as freehold at Concession 10, Lot 10 of Smith.

In 1901, Albert was 55, a widower, occupation mill labourer, and living in Ashburnham in a lodging house with William Allen Parker (20), (also listed as mill labourer), Ethel Parker (18) and Olive Parker (15). I found a mention that William Allen Parker married a Lilian Ethel Bartley November 6, 1907. I didn’t check in to what happened to Ethel and Olive, but the last mention in the census for Albert is in 1911. By this point Albert was 65 years old, and living on his own in a rooming house at 186 George St. Peterborough. His religion is listed as Baptist, and he still working as a labourer, but this time for Canadian General Electric ($450 a year)! I wonder if he was incorporated into CGE as they took over the mill property?

I think I found his death notice, which suggests he died in 1914 and is buried in the Lakefield cemetery. It was so cool to find an artifact that we can likely trace back to its owner. I wonder how upset he was to lose this ring, it seems as though it would have been a treasured item.

We were lucky to fit in a couple of hours of excavation today before the threatening rain started pelting down!

We quickly packed up the site and got the equipment back to the trailer and then broke for lunch. After lunch we decided to take the opportunity to start processing the artifacts we have been collecting in our Archaeology Centre wet lab.

It was really great to get a chance to go through the artifacts we have collected to date on the excavation. I chose this dog tag as our artifact of the day. It says “DOG TAX/1907/PETERBORO/361”.

In 1907, General Electric was leasing the property for the first power station on the west bank, however, we know that people were still living on the parcel. Perhaps this tag came from the neighbouring house, which we know was occupied into the late 1950s.

Dog tax seems to have been a contentious issue at this time. An article in the Lindsay Post from 1907 reporting about dog licensing in Kingson calls people “Animaniacs” and suggests that there are twice as many dogs in Kingston enjoying life than are registered with the tax assessor. The writer suggests that the city offer a 25-cent reward to people who correctly report to the assessor that a dog is not on the list. It also states that “All dogs should be taxed or face the policeman’s revolver!”.

Luckily our unknown Prinnie/Pete/Bobbie/Carlos/Fluffy/Fannie [all names referenced in the article] was registered on our assessor rolls, at least in 1907!