Have you ever wanted to travel through time? Think it’s impossible? Archaeologists do it every day here in Baldwin County. They can’t go forward in time, but going backwards is no problem.

According to Raven Christopher, a young archaeologist at the University of South Alabama, “People think you have to go overseas to do good archaeology and see into the past. That isn’t true. We have found and documented lots of fascinating things right here in Baldwin County. For example, my favorite site here is Fort Mims. That site is well known historically, and during our excavations there I found ceramic fragments, musket balls, bottle glass, gun flints, and lots of house materials. Some of these items were burnt from the fire that happened there during the famous battle of 1813, so it’s really like being able to touch history.”

Raven Christopher sprays water on an excavation in Baldwin County

The Baldwin sites cover the whole length of the county, and a huge range of time. Says Bonnie Gums, laboratory supervisor at USA’s Center for Archaeological Studies, “We have excavated a number of important sites in Baldwin County, including a prehistoric Indian village in Gulf Shores with amazingly beautiful pottery; another Indian village on Plash Island on the Bon Secour River near Weeks Bay; Blakeley State Park, where we found the 1820s town of Blakeley; the Village Point Preserve in Daphne, where we found an old plantation site; and the stoneware pottery kilns in Montrose, Daphne, Fairhope and on Fish River, where we documented over 30 different potters from the 1820s to World War II. We are beginning work at the new Bicentennial Park south of Stockton, and have already found the site of Joshua Kennedy’s second mill from the period of the War of 1812.

Said Gums, “Often the kinds of things we find on our excavations are pieces of pottery and glass, buried walls and fence lines, and pieces of clay pipes. What we really like to find are old garbage dumps and old wells filled in with ‘trash.’ Those provide rich insights. Once we have excavated a site and analyzed the fragments found, we can almost always identify the time period and cultural context of the site.”

Much of USA’s archaeological work in Baldwin is driven by development. According to Gums, “Many of our projects are what we call ‘cultural resource management’ work. When federal and state permitting is involved, developers are required under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and Alabama Historical Commission guidelines to conduct a cultural resources study, if the proposed construction will impact archaeological sites. Often we are asked to determine if there is something of archaeological value at a site, that might make it eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.”

The Village Point Preserve site, located on public land in Daphne, provided some tantalizing clues to a little-known but fascinating part of Baldwin’s rich history.

According to Gums, “At or near Village Point in Daphne there was a settlement of five or six plantations, simply called ‘The Village’ on old maps of the 1760s to 1790s. The Village was the site of one of the only major battles in Alabama of the Revolutionary War period, in which the American revolutionaries in the thirteen colonies were allied with the Spanish and French against the British.”

According to historian Jack Holmes, writing in a 1976 article in The Alabama Review, in March 1780 the Spanish seized control of Mobile from the British. Learning of plans for a British counter-attack from Pensacola, Spanish Colonel Jose de Ezpeleta supplied a garrison of 190 men to protect The Village. These included troops from the Caribbean and the New Orleans Colored Militia Companies, and the Royal Artillery Corps with two 4-pound cannons.

Holmes’ research revealed that during the ensuing battle of January 7, 1781, the British attacked the now-fortified Village with 200 regular troops and about 500 Indians. The British attacked fiercely in a morning fog, but eventually were forced to retreat with high casualties of 18 British dead and about 60 wounded. The Spanish lost about a third of The Village garrison. Holmes calls this battle “Alabama’s Bloodiest Day of the American Revolution.”

According to Bonnie Gums, the exact site of the historic battle of The Village in Daphne has not yet been located. “We’re looking for that,” she said. “There’s still a lot of things to find in Baldwin County.”

For more information, see www.southalabama.edu/archaeology/. Volunteers to excavate historic sites are always welcome. To contact them, email archaeology@usamail.usouthal.edu and include your name, age, mailing address, phone number and email. Or call 251-460-6562.

* * *

Close this window