The Roof Comes Off!

It's the moment we've all been waiting for: workers removed an entire side of the Study roof!

Workers went up more than 30 feet in a lift truck to cut the copper roof into manageable pieces.

Then they pried the pieces from the underlayment...

and put them in the basket of the lift truck to bring down.

Now the east side of the building looks a bit bare. Something that surprised some of the Museum staff was that the structure underneath the copper is wooden, including the battens or ridges. We thought there would be metal under the copper. The photo here shows that the wood is blackened from being in the heat for 112 years!

Click on the title of the blog post to see a video of a piece of the roof coming off.

Lew's Crew Volunteer Call Out

We're looking to add volunteers to Lew's Crew!

Following in Lew's footsteps (as Adjutant General he recruited 13 companies of soldiers for the Civil War in 10 days), we're calling everyone interested.

Our biggest need is for tour guides, so if you are a people person willing to be an ambassador for Crawfordsville, we'd love to see you at the Carriage House, Wednesday, Sept. 29 at 5:30 p.m.!

Moving the Steps

To reset the front steps of the Study, workers removed caulking and sealant from around the cracks and gaps (we posted pictures last week), and then looped a harness around each step to remove them with the lift truck.

Pulling the stop step away from the building.

Completely removed!

One down, two to go.

They removed all the steps in a similar fashion. The bottom step has a large crack in it, so they moved that one is two pieces. Here they're stacked in reverse, with the cracked bottom step on top.

You can see why the steps need to be reset! The settling through the years, combined with previous work, have resulted in a hodge-podge pile of material under the steps. If you look closely, you can see the combination of bright red vitrified brick, concrete, and browner, local Poston brick making up the fill under the steps.

Click on the blog post title to see a video of the top step coming off!

The Exciting Conclusion

Some of the artifacts found in the screens include pieces of bottles (round pieces in the middle), fragments of plates (bottom left corner), nails (upper right corner), and a squirrel vertebrae (top).

Anne Moore of Weintraut and Associates excavates a feature. An archaeological feature is like an artifact, but it is part of the site and cannot be removed without destroying it. This small trench was filled with gravel, a very different fill from the surrounding soil.

In another unit, students carve out the dirt around remnants of bricks from the reflecting pool wall. In more recent years, drainage pipes ran through this area, so these pieces may have broken apart while installing those pipes.

The final shot of the wall. This section is clearly made of bricks, which prompts the question: where are the stones that rimmed the edges of the pool? Someone suggested that the worker hired to fill in the pool agreed to do so in exchange for the stonework. Hmmm...

At the end of the excavation, archaeologists backfill the site with the dirt they removed. While it seems funny to cover up everything they just dug out, backfilling helps to protect what they found and fills in the holes so visitors to the grounds don't get hurt.

So, over the course of the weekend we found one wall of the reflecting pool, more evidence for a location for Old John's grave, and some surprising artifacts. We had a good turnout of community members coming to help. We also raised more questions than answers, and never did find the bottom of the pool. As sometimes happens, we were just getting to "the good stuff" when it was time to leave. Based on this first program, we are excited for another edition of History Beneath Us, and started making plans before the archaeologists left on Sunday! Stay tuned for more details.

How Low Can You Go?

The archaeologists devoted one unit to finding the bottom of the reflecting pool. A probe indicated that the bottom of the pool is about 55 cm below the bottom of the unit when this picture was taken. That's going to take a lot of digging! Because this is not an artifact-rich area, and they wanted to get through the soil quickly, they dug with shovels rather than trowels.

Every 10 cm is a new level. To know how deep they are, the students must measure from a level line. They measure at least two corners and in the center of the unit to get an accurate reading for the entire unit.

John's Grave?

Where is the grave of Old John? Local lore has it that Lew Wallace buried his favorite horse, named John, somewhere on the grounds. Last fall, surveyer Jim Swift brought out ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to investigate the southwestern corner of the grounds, where many people remember there being a marker to John decades ago. The GPR found an anomaly under the surface, meaning that there is an area that is not the same as the soil around it. Could it be a horse's grave? An outbuilding for the house on the other side of the brick wall? Just some funny dirt?


Dr. Chris Moore of University of Indianapolis brought out a bucket auger to drill into the ground and extract layers of soil to see what this anomaly is made of.

Moore sifted through the dirt in each layer, noting its composition and whether or not it contained any artifacts. A student recorded his observations so we have a record of the layers of soil.

Pay dirt! 85 cm below the surface, we hit a cultural layer containing tile (orange-colored piece), charcoal and coal (larger black pieces). Such materials were commonly used as backfill years ago when someone dug up an area and then filled it back in. The question is, why was someone digging here? Could it be John's grave?

Who's up for another History Beneath Us program focusing on this area?

The Top of the Wall

Anne Moore from Weintraut & Associates cut through tree roots that have grown across the top of the reflecting pool wall.

At the end of the first day, the top of the reflecting pool wall was clean and clearly defined.

Volunteers screened each bucket of dirt for artifacts. They pulled out coal fragments, plastic, remnants of past Easter egg hunts, and many small pieces of brick.

Several surprising artifacts came to light during the day, such as this plate fragment. Could it be from Lew's kitchen in the basement of the Study?