Wynn-Price: Hidden Gem in Garland City

Earlier this month I received a call from a Skip Bernard who was working with a museum organization out of Shreveport, but he lived in Doddridge, Arkansas…to make a long story short, the organization was interested in a historic building in Garland City (in Miller County just east of Texarkana)…this historic home was already on the National Register of Historic Places (since 1992), but it was not in the Arkansas state archaeological site files…moreover, the nomination actually stated that the site could benefit from archaeological work…so they called me…That’s how I came to know about the Wynn-Price House.

Last week I met Skip over at the house, and let me say that it a hidden gem in Garland City…to steal words from the AHPP website, “this grand Greek Revival design, luxurious in both plan and elevation, was undoubtedly constructed largely from materials shipped up the Red River from New Orleans and elsewhere (we know that the marble for the two fireplaces was so ordered). The tall imposing two-story portico with its flanking single-story ‘temples’ must have been one of the most majestic edifices in the region”…it is certainly one of the most complex Greek Revival houses that I have seen in Arkansas…Ironically, I HAVE visited the African-American cemetery associated with the Wynn-Price plantation (known as Wynns Cemetery)….but when I visited it last year (with Anthony Clay Newton), we had no idea that a huge antebellum mansion lay just around the corner…go figure.

The description below is a brief excerpt from the AHPP website entry for the Wynn-Price House…below you also find links to my photographs of the structure and the AHPP entry…I look forward to investigating this house–and its associated plantation–in the near future.

As is frequently the case in Arkansas, attempts to study even significant characters in local or regional antebellum history are frustrated by a lack of primary sources. Reconstructing the life and activities of William Wynn is no different, though we do know through census records, slave ownership records and deed information that he was a successful farmer, and probably growing cotton, the staple crop of the Red River valley during this period. However, when considered within the broader context of American and regional history during the period of 1835 (the first documented date of William Wynn’s arrival in the Red River area) to 1861, the primary sources that do survive support certain additional conclusions about Wynn’s investment activities and his hopes for the “city” of Garland as a major commercial river and overland transportation crossroads…Though the site probably also retains potential to reveal further information about the occupation of the site by William Wynn, his two sons (the 1840 Lafayette County census indicates two males between the ages of 20 and 30 living with him, though not necessarily at this site) and his slaves, a professional archaeological investigation of the site remains to be done. Such investigation, upon completion, may justify additional areas of significance for the property.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbrandon/sets/72157603949469598/

http://www.arkansaspreservation.org/historic-properties/_search_nomination_popup.asp?id=5

Frog Level

The Old Frazier Plantation was built in what was then still part of Lafayette County, Arkansas, in 1852…It still survives, and has become something of a landmark of regional (and in many ways state-level) importance. However, it is known now as “Frog Level.”

William Frazier built this great example of Greek revival architecture, but the current owner is attorney Joe Woodward. Yesterday I visited Frog Level for the second time (the first time was about a year ago when one of my volunteers, Vernon Perry, was initially giving me a tour of the county). Yesterday, I visited because I had run into Mr. Woodward at a historic preservation meeting in Magnolia the night before…he told me that one of the chimneys at Frog Level had fallen during the fierce winds we had had during a storm a few days earlier…He also told me that the insurance adjuster was coming out and that if I wanted to tag along, I was welcome.

So Anthony Clay Netwon (local professional archaeological technician and AAS volunteer) and I headed out to Frog Level for a look around…we got to see what a 1850s chimney fall looks like when it is fresh for a change…although the chimney had been encased in a light concrete-type stucco sometime in the 1940s-50s…beneath the stucco were the handmade bricks…soft-fired with one dry struck surface…the bright orange bricks were made of the local sandy clay and really had very few inclusions (i.e., tempering agents such as fired clay, horse hair, etc.).

Although we had come out to Frog Level to document the fall, we also wanted to look into possibly doing some archeological work at the plantation site….aside from the impressive standing home, there would have been many outbuildings and other structures that served the plantation and surrounding community.

For instance, only a few hundred feet from the house—at its current gated entrance–is a marker designating the place at which the Ferguson and Morgan store once stood. Although most folks in Columbia County think that the house itself served as the first County Courthouse, it was this store that hosted the first terms of County Court (held on March 21, 1853). At the first County Court two men, Ananias Godbolt (whose plantation site is now in Nevada County….I hope to investigate that one as well) and Andrew J. Thompson were appointed commissioners to locate a site for a permanent county seat. They found a higher elevation nearer the center of the new county—the current site of Magnolia, Arkansas.

Not only was this store the “seat of justice” for a brief time in Columbia County, but it also would have been (for a much longer period of time) an important nexus point for the larger community as a place were goods were bought and sold…and a place were neighbors met, information was passed along and, in reality, a community born.

I am very interested in using archaeology to shed some light of the Ferguson and Morgan store…as well as the many other buildings at Frazier Plantation and the other homes that made up the Frog Level community…Frog Level community….that brings me to my final point.

One of the things that clearly impressed me with Mr. Woodward was his ability to cut through many of the myths surrounding Frog Level and to more clearly understand the “history behind the story.” Early avocational historians such as Hattie Kilgore and Mary Davis Woodward used to say that the name “Frog Level” was “first given to the imposing structure by a young attorney, B. F. Askew; the name was chosen because the frogs were so numerous in the bottoms near-by” (Woodward 1949). Both Joe Woodward and I believe that Frog Level was originally a name used to refer to the greater community in the area–the name was probably taken from some settlers past experience in Frog Level, North Carolina (or Virginia, Alabama, Georgia…take your pick)…as the community shrank and moved to Magnolia, the main house at the Frazier Plantation became the only part of Frog Level left…thus the house became known as “Frog Level.”

At any rate, I plan to revisit Frog Level in the fall (when the foliage is gone) and map out the potential locations of outbuildings and other house places…maybe we’ll do our first SAU Spring Break dig at Frog Level…I’ll keep you posted.

—
Woodward, Mary Davis
1949 “‘Frog Level,’ Oldest House in Columbia County,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 8 (Spring 1949): 327-30.

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On a Mission…

I’m back from a brief working vacation–helping my friend James Davidson and the University of Florida’s archaeological field school on Fort George Island near Jacksonville, Florida.

For the past two years James (and his very competent minions) have been excavating at Kinglsey Plantation–the birthplace of African Diaspora archeology. Last year I blogged about Kinglesy’s place in archeological history and the big shoes that James had to fill…I also hinted at the fact that James had made some interesting discoveries…but not wanting to steal his thunder, I did not say what those discoveries were. As several papers have been given on last year’s excavations, I can now finish my report.

As I mentioned in my post last summer, one of the things that Charles Fairbanks was looking for in the 1960s Kingsley excavations was evidence of “Africanisms” or cultural traits retained from the myriad of African cultures from which the slaves came. Fairbanks did not find evidence of Africanisms, and now we consider the entire concept an over simplified one that reifies Africa and underestimates the complicated ways that culture changes and adapts to new surroundings and interactions…nevertheless, in a way, Davidson has seceded where the great Dr. Fairbanks had failed. On the last week of last year’s field school Davidson and the UF students uncovered what appears to be an intentional chicken burial inside the threshold of one of the tabby slave cabins. I’ll let Davidson draw the parallels between various West African rituals (including house blessing rituals) that involve sacrifice (and sometimes burial) of animals (often chickens)…but I’m here to talk a bit about one of the “other” projects going on at the UF field school.

This year I spent two weeks helping out not at the Kinglsey Plantation, but at a Spanish mission site which is also situated on the island–San Juan del Puerto. I was serving as “aide-de-camp” to Rebecca Gorman, one of James’ graduate students who has also been trained by Kathleen Deagan and Jerald Milanich…She was great to work with and it was a great group of students that cycled through the San Juan dig as well (Rebecca and students are shown screening at San Juan above).

San Juan del Puerto was a Roman Catholic mission founded around 1587 on Fort George Island, near the mouth of the St. Johns River (thus, Rebecca informed me, the name). The mission was one of the oldest and longest-standing missions in Spanish Florida (1587-1703). It was established by Jesuits & Franciscans to proselytize to the Timucua Indians who lived along the coast, but was quickly also a haven for the Guale Indian refugees fleeing attacks in their home territory along the Georgia coast.

The mission core area is now overgrown, but we had a good time finding majolica, gun flints, beads and the two dramatically different pottery types used by the Timucua and Guale…Like last year, I do not want to steal any of the UF thunder, so I’ll let them tell you about this year’s finds at the next round of conferences before I spill my guts….

More of my pictures from the UF field school can be found posted to my Flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbrandon/sets/72157594171810221/