ROCKINGHAM — Hand-cut square nails and small fragments from 18th century clay smoking pipes are the biggest clues found so far during a recent archeological dig at the Rockingham Meeting House.
Archeologists from Hartgen Archeological Associates of Rensselaer, N.Y., have been carefully digging and sifting, all part of a requirement of the National Park Service before the federal government releases the town's $360,00 Saving American Treasures grant, which the town received two years ago toward the restoration of the national historic landmark.
On Thursday, May 1, the Hartgen three-person team dug a "test unit" square on the east side of the meeting house, roughly three feet square, following clues from earlier ground penetrating radar which revealed some anomalies. They will dig four of the bigger, deeper units.
Late last month, they dug 61 smaller "shovel tests," 50 by 50 centimeters square, on the lawns surrounding the meeting house, and discovered few items.
Nathaniel "Natty" Durant of Brattleboro led the team, and the large pit showed three distinct layers of soil, including a very thin, very dark layer which he identified as ash, as he rubbed the soil between his fingers. The ash came between the thick topsoil level, and the next layer. The artifacts were found in the ash layer, he said.
The ash could have come simply from someone dumping their fireplace ashes, he said, and further excavation will see if the ash layer spreads over a large area. Leppman pointed out that early settlers often burned standing trees to clear the land, a practice they borrowed from Native people.
"It may have even been a farm for a brief period of time," he said, he said of the site.
On May 1, the soil was scooped up and given to Jill Cox, who was running the sifting operation, which can uncover key small elements. Durant said the archeological results had been "pretty sterile," with few discoveries.
But that day, the team uncovered a large deposit of ash, according to Walter Wallace, Rockingham historic preservation coordinator, who said it was "a large zone" of what appeared to be wood ash, reminiscent from some kind of bonfire. There were no cultural artifacts this time, he said, in the ash.
"There's a lot of glacial till," Durant said, noting that it's possible the knoll the meeting house sits on was once an island in Lake Hitchcock, the "pre-contact" glacial lake that eventually turned into the Connecticut River.
John Leppman, chairman of the Rockingham Historic Preservation Commission, was on hand, and said that the town's 1908 history, written by Lyman Hayes, talked about the original 1774 meeting house being located "eight rods" from the current meeting house.
Construction on the meeting house started in 1787, and it was in continuous use as both a church and the town hall until the 1860s, when the town built a new town hall in the village of Bellows Falls, the population center of Rockingham. It is considered the most intact 18th century public building in Vermont. It was abandoned and vandalized from the 1860s until 1907, when the town undertook a restoration.
The team has plans to dig about six or eight large pits to look for the original meeting house's foundation. Earlier in the week, the team dug dozens of smaller and shallower square holes in the east and west side lawns of the meeting house, also looking for clues.
It's been a slow process, said Wallace, the town of Rockingham's historic preservation coordinator. Wallace has spearheaded the effort to get state and federal grants to do the ambitious $3 million restoration of the 1787 meeting house, which needs a new foundation to stop deterioration. The restoration has been divided into three phases.
With the required archeological report in hand later this year, Wallace said, construction could start next year. Original but preliminary plans to jack up the meeting house and move it to allow for the construction of a new foundation have been rejected, he said.
Durant said the digging revealed a partial horseshoe, believed to be located near a hitching post, and the existence of a buried 220 volt power line, which is disconnected. The line may have delivered power to the meeting house's former ground level spotlights.
The big payoff would be finding the foundation of the original meeting house, which is believed to have been built just east of the existing structure. The archeologists also want to rule out any possibility of gravesites not in the proper cemetery boundaries.
So far, there was no evidence of burials outside the cemetery boundaries, said Wallace. Leppman said some Rockingham historians have hinted that grave sites at the meeting house were moved and realigned during previous restoration work, a practice not unheard of in New England.
Durant, the project manager for Hartgen, said the most interesting things discovered were found in a thin layer of ash, located about eight inches below the surface of the ground. In that ash layer, the archeologists found handcut nails — and some more modern nails — as well as fragments from a clay smoking pipe.
Stefan Kloss, field archeologist, showed the tiny white bits of pipe, and rusted nails.
Large stones that were found in the larger pit were not part of a foundation, Durant said, although the team was going to start digging another large pit nearby to rule that out.
The town has also received a federal $750,000 Semiquincentennial grant, to commemorate the country's 250th anniversary, and that money is expected to be used for interior restoration to plaster and woodwork, as well as the building's massive timber frame.
Wallace said he expects the Hartgen 2025 archeological report to be used for the Semiquincentennail grant as well.
He said there have been four archeological examinations at the meeting house since 1991, prior to restoration work on the building's foundation and sills. Hartgen did some work in 2023, he said, and a Castleton University professor, Ellen Moriarity, did some work in 2023-24.
It was Moriarity's work which included the ground-penetrating radar, which was the guide for the work this month, he said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at ssmallheer@reformer.com.
A group of archaeologists examined one of the units that was dug at the Rockingham Meeting House as they searched for artifacts on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
