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Digging up the past in Shippensburg
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Dale Heberlig/The Sentinel
Skip Carey, a member of the Shippensburg Historical Society, scoops dirt into a bucket. In the background. Stephen Warfel, retired State Museum Commission archaeologist, screens dirt with two other volunteers.
Fueled by a fresh archaeological dig this spring, historians are homing in on what they believe is the “true” site of the French and Indian War-era Fort Morris.
Archeologist Steve Warfel says a dig that began June 2 at a somewhat secret location in the east end of Shippensburg is yielding some historical artifacts.
“We’ve found some items that suggest we’re close to the site (of Fort Morris),” Warfel said Wednesday morning.
Among the significant finds unearthed by a team that includes 45 volunteers are two metal buttons and telltale ceramic fragments.
“The fragments are English ceramics that date to the 1750s and 1760s,” says Warfel, former curator of archeology at Pennsylvania’s state museum. “The metal buttons also come from the same time frame.”
What makes the discoveries more significant, Warfel says, is that there was no development on or near the excavation site, except for the fort, until much later in time.
No military finds have been located yet, Warfel says, but the dig site will expand in coming days.
“We expect to find stronger evidence then,” he says.
Patty Hay, a master’s degree candidate at Shippensburg University, is among the volunteers who wield trowels and buckets in the back yard of a private residence where the dig is located.
Hay has been on the job every day since the dig began, she says.
“I’ve never worked in the field before, so this is a lot of fun,” the Butler native says. “It’s amazing what you can tell from the dirt.”
Aside from artifacts, Warfel says, the earth itself tells a story. He’s looking at layers of clay and topsoil as clues to what happened when at the site.
An apparent trench that was filled with rocks at some time is another indication of something, Warfel says.
He hopes to eventually locate a trench that would have been dug as a “footer” for the stockade that protected Fort Morris.
Hay says the dig is hard work.
“I get really wiped out and go home and get a nap,” she says.
The nap revives her for several more hours of organizational work later in the evening.
As project manager of the dig for the Shippensburg Historical Society, Hay organizes the volunteers and attends to logistical details involved with providing tools and equipment.
Location questioned
The location of Fort Morris has long been a subject of dispute, with various historians touting different opinions.
A historical marker near the dig site identifies the location as the former Fort Franklin, but Shippensburg Historical Society President John McCorriston says there was never a Fort Franklin in Shippensburg.
Another historical marker on West King Street claims Fort Morris stood on a rocky bluff that came to be known as Bull’s Eye.
That contention is largely rejected today.
Others — including grass roots historian Hayes Eschenmann — argue the fort stood further south, near Walnut Street and Ridge Avenue.
Wherever it stood, there is indisputable evidence of the existence of Fort Morris as the Shippensburg area braced to defend against marauding Native Americans who drove frontier settlers to the relative safety of the village in what was termed a “savage war.”
In a November 1755 letter, James Burd reportedly wrote: “We have one hundred men working at Fort Morris with heart and hand every day. The town is full of people, five or six families in a house, in great want of arms and ammunition; but, with what we have we are determined to give the enemy as warm a reception, as we can.”
Center of action
While official attention this summer is focused on the 250th anniversary of the Forbes Expedition that carved a path west to Pittsburgh in 1758, Shippensburg historians say this area was at the center of the French and Indian War — “the war that made America.”
James Wetzler says Shippensburg is rich in French and Indian history, despite the absence of official tourism sites.
A little imagination is all that’s necessary to envision conditions around Dykeman Spring, where “a large Native American encampment” bivouacked in 1758.
Wetzler — a Colonial American history scholar and a member of the French and Indian War 250th National Educational Advisory Board — says Cherokees aligned with British forces camped at Dykeman, and other tribes such as the Delaware and Shawnee were already in the area — pushed about by the impact of the Penn family’s Walking Purchase.
Widow Piper’s Tavern is the most visible holdover from the French and Indian period, but Wetzler says there are other features.
He says British Lt. Col. Thomas Dunbar camped at the eastern end of Shippensburg in the summer of 1755 somewhere near what is now the Toll Gate Restaurant with part of General Edward Braddock’s command. Braddock’s disastrous campaign ended with his death at the Battle of the Monongahela, and Dunbar camped in Shippensburg as he fled after destroying cannons and wagons that he held as support for Braddock’s “flying column.”
That retreat left the frontier unprotected and made Fort Morris crucial in providing some security while British military men reorganized.
The Forbes Road later passed through what is now Shippensburg Township as it forged west on the expedition that captured Fort Duquesne and avenged Braddock’s defeat. Remnants of Forbes Road are vaguely visible in land that is under rapid commercial development north of Route 174 (Walnut Bottom Road).
Wetzler and McCorriston hope to find artifacts for display at the historical society in the archeological dig.
