Pennsylvania’s Moving Frontier
Friday, April 12, 2024 – 1:30-4:30 PM – Comfort Suites, 10 S. Hanover Street, Carlisle, PA 17013
The frontier shifted rapidly across trans-Appalachian
Pennsylvania during the 18th century, sometimes so quickly that cartographers
struggled to keep up, forcing researchers to consider alternative data sources.
Information about this period can be gleaned from a variety of sources, ranging from the
archaeological record and historical documents to Indigenous oral histories and
ethnohistoric accounts. This symposium explores the movement of people across the
landscape in this period of Pennsylvania history, as well as the response to that
movement by Indigenous populations already living there.
Discussants:
Katelyn Lucas (THPO, Delaware Nation)
Dr. Ben Ford (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
Contributing Papers:
Following the Path of Conflict: Archaeology of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Military
Material Culture on Pennsylvania’s Colonial Frontier
Jonathan A. Burns, Ph. D. (Director, Cultural Resource Institute at Juniata College)
At the core of conflict archaeology in Pennsylvania is the discovery and documentation
of fortifications, roads, and battlefields. With respect to military activity of the French and
Indian War, the historic record supplies a wealth of written accounts regarding
expeditions, logistics, and daily orders. Working with this history, archaeology
documents the material consequences of these historic actions—thus providing the
connectivity between the past and historic sites that make interpretation possible.
Pennsylvania was relatively late compared to its neighbors in developing a plan for
frontier defense, but Braddock’s defeat in July of 1755 brough this matter to the
forefront of the colony’s concerns resulting in fortification of its frontier. Using
archaeological data from Juniata College field school projects, this paper highlights how
archaeology can be used to trace Pennsylvania’s moving frontier through material
culture. The archaeology of early forts like Fort Shirley (October 1755) and Fort Halifax
(June 1756) differs significantly from that of Forbes Expedition sites dating to 1758;
while Fort Lyttelton serves as an example of an early fortification that remained in use
throughout the Forbes Campaign until Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763.
A Month to Muster: Uncovering Camp Security’s Rushed Revolutionary Footprint
John T. Crawmer (Goldfinch Archaeology)
The recent discovery of a stockade at Camp Security, a Revolutionary War prisoner-of-
war camp in York County, offers a rare window into the layout and management of 18th-
century prison camps. In the absence of contemporary cartographic sources,
archaeology is the sole means of interpreting the site’s design. The camp’s construction
was a rushed one-month endeavor and the stockade’s ad hoc construction reflects an
improvisational American response to the shifting frontier of war. This theme continues
into other structures, which disregard standard military practice, and in the materiality of
the prisoners themselves. This paper presents recent findings from the archaeological
investigation of Camp Security and explores how its hasty construction echoes the
realities of maintaining order in Revolutionary Pennsylvania.
Rediscovering Brush Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church, Indiana County,
Pennsylvania
Stephanie Zellers (Staff Archaeologist/Geophysics Specialist, Skelly and Loy, A Terracon Company)
The Lutheran Congregation at Brush Valley was one of the oldest in the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania and the first Indiana County, being founded in 1794 by a group of
German pioneers on the forefront of the Pennsylvania frontier. Very few records exist of
the early years of the congregation, including the exact locations of the first churches
and records of the existing graveyard in which they were constructed. This paper
presents the results of ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity surveys, and
ground truthing of a 40x40m area in the old section of the cemetery as they pertain to
identifying the locations of the original churches, determining if any remains of the
buildings are present, and assessing the number of unmarked graves within the survey
area.
Frontier at the Mouth of the Cheniaty (Juniata): An Assessment of 18th-century Archaeological Potential on Duncan Island, Dauphin County.
Gary Coppock (Senior Archaeologist, Skelly and Loy, A Terracon Company)
Duncan Island, at the confluence of the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers, contains
stratified pre-contact deposits, a former burial mound, and archaeological remains of the
Pennsylvania Canal. A story less well-known regards the island’s 18 th -century
occupation. It was inhabited by Native refugees from ca. 1700 to 1749 and briefly by
John Harris (of Harrisburg fame) in 1733. By 1735 Huling’s (aka Clark’s) ferry was
established, later providing an important link in the Harrisburg and Millersburg turnpike.
By 1756 the then uninhabited island was claimed by the Baskins family (father
scalped/murdered; wife and children abducted but released) and by the Rose family
from 1765-1770. Warranted to the Penns in 1760 and sold to its namesake, PA
Supreme Court Justice Thomas Duncan in 1805, the island’s archaeological potential
makes one’s head spin.
The Carroll Cabin: Breathing Life Into An Artifact on the Landscape
Katherine Peresolak (Cultural Resources Crew, Field Director/Jr. P.I., Student Conservation Association)
The Carroll Cabin, a historic hand-hewn timber building with an original mid-19 th century
addition, remains extant in the Forbes State Forest in Fayette County. Numerous
research and fieldwork efforts have been completed on this NRHP-eligible resource,
including minor pre-2015 documentary research and a metal-detector survey initiated by
its steward, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. At
the time of its post-1775 construction, unstable political and social climates, poor
agricultural soil, and its remote location were a few of the challenges facing the
Europeans who occupied the home. Research conducted thus far has allowed insight
into known residents, narrowed our knowledge of the building’s age, taught us ways that
people tried to make a living off of the land, and highlighted the cultural value of the
Frontier-period resource. On-going rehabilitation plans aim to incorporate the Carroll
Cabin, a historic artifact itself, into DCNR’s overnight rental system.
Lenape Diaspora: Colonizer Communities to Fort Pitt
Susan Bachor (Historic Preservation Officer, Delaware Tribe of Indians)
Heather A. Wholey, Ph.D., RPA (Professor, West Chester University)
Lenape people are dispersed worldwide with their home nations found in current day
Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario Canada. Lënapehòkink, land of the Lenape, is the
Middle Atlantic region from the Lower Hudson region south to the state of Delaware and
west as far the Brandywine River. With increased pressure from traders and colonizers
the first land cessions occurred as early as 1630 in coastal ports and estuaries from
New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and southeastern Pennsylvania. Subsequent land
grabs and foreign military invasions pushed us grudgingly further West with the final
removal from Pennsylvania, the signing of the Treaty of Fort Pitt in 1778, breaking our
last tie with the homelands.
