MSNBC.com Article: Digging into town's history

Here is an interesting article from the Burlington Hawk-Eye:

 

Digging into town's history
Excavation of pre-Civil War town offering interesting insights.
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By DAVID GRIMES

The Burlington Hawk Eye

Burlington, IA - Excavation of pre-Civil War town offering interesting insights. for The Hawk Eye

An African-American slave from South Carolina who worked his way to freedom in the early 1800s established a community where persons of all racial backgrounds would be welcome a century and a half before Rodney King ever wondered if we all could just get along.

"Free Frank" McWorter was born in South Carolina in 1777, but purchased his freedom while working as a slave for a man in Kentucky who allowed McWorter to earn wages in his spare time.

McWorter eventually moved to west-central Illinois where he put down roots near Barry, Ill., about 30 miles southeast of Quincy, and where he incorporated the town of New Philadelphia in 1836.

McWorter eventually returned to the South to purchase the freedom of 16 of his family members at a cost of $14,000.

This month the New Philadelphia site was named to the Illinois Register of Historic Places.

It is the first known case of a town being laid out and registered by a freed slave in the United States. The town's population was approximately 30 percent black and 70 percent white and thrived through the Civil War and beyond in a county more inclined to be sympathetic rather than hostile toward slave-holding states.

A team of 30 students looking for clues to what life was like at New Philadelphia during its 100 or so years of existence completed the second of three summer digs at the site on Saturday. Ten of the students involved in the excavation were selected from colleges and universities around the country to participate in the dig through the National Science Foundation Experiences for Undergraduate students program. The other 14 students are archaeology and anthropology students from the University of Illinois.

The NSF students received weekly stipends, room and board for their participation in the project, while U of I students received 6 credit hours for their time invested in the field study dig.

"It (the NSF program) offers field research experience for undergraduate students working toward various degrees from colleges around the country and who might not otherwise get the opportunity for this kind of experience," Evan Patuelo, a graduate assistant from Southern California working on her doctorate in prehistoric archaeology at the U of I and who worked at the New Philadelphia site as a student supervisor this year, said.

All students spent five weeks in the field and are now spending another five weeks in lab analysis at the Illinois State Museum labs in Springfield.

Excavation from the first two summers has netted several thousand pieces to be identified and analyzed. This summer's finds include square-shaped nails dating from the 1880s, pottery shards, bits and pieces of china, a handkerchief clip, foundation stones, the bowl from a clay pipe, a portion of shears, a button from a Civil War uniform and a cup from a child's tea set.

New Philadelphia's population never grew to more than 170 although it was platted with 144 lots and had several businesses, two schools and plans for a seminary.

Dig finds from the site are hoped to provide clues as to how integrated life in a pre-Civil War community flourished.

How was the community's name decided?

Paul Shackel, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Heritage Resource Studies and lead archaeologist for the New Philadelphia project, believes McWorter may have selected the name for the same reason Philadelphia was chosen for the Pennsylvania city.

"Nobody knows for sure. But the name means city of brotherly love and that might have been what he (McWorter) was thinking," Shackel said.

New Philadelphia was a town of working class people. a service community of farm laborers who hired out to landowners in the surrounding areas and where small businesses provided for the needs of neighboring farmers. Oral history accounts indicate that New Philadelphia was as popular a place as any for neighbors in the area to conduct business and from which to hire laborers, but there are post-Civil War oral accounts, too, that may offer hints as to the reason for the town's tapering population toward the end of the 19th Century.

County records show that when the railroad came through the area in 1869, the line was built around New Philadelphia rather than through it. As the town's population dwindled in the years after, the section of railroad that had been built around the community was relocated one half mile closer to the town in 1939.

And there are other accounts of the Ku Klux Klan harassing town residents.

U of I and NSF student teams will return for a third and final year in 2006 for the joint excavation effort.

In the meantime, members of the New Philadelphia Association, a local support group for the project, continue to seek placement on the National Register of Historic Places and explore the possibility of New Philadelphia becoming part of the National Park Service