Bones reveal history in Lewes

A brass button here, remnants of a wooden coffin there. These are the scraps of evidence archaeologist Edward Otter is using to narrow down who is likely buried in a recently discovered, unmarked cemetery just outside Lewes.

Tombstones may be absent, but Otter says he believes he knows who was laid to rest in a plot in the Hawkseye community. Through artifacts left behind and land records, Otter has narrowed the timeline down to a time in the 18th century when the Wolfe family occupied the land.

Reese Wolfe Sr. and Jr. and their families owned and lived on the land in what is now Hawkseye in the mid- to late 1700s. When construction crews began excavating the site of a new home in August, they uncovered a previously unknown family cemetery, the final resting place of 10 people.

Otter and his team of three technicians carefully uncovered 11 graves, 10 of which contained skeletal remains. Most shafts contained coffins facing east, suggesting Christian-style burials. Little remained of the wooden coffins, but several artifacts were found, including brass buttons, nails, shroud pins and cloth.

One burial site took Otter by surprise. Unlike the other sites, one featured a zinc outer coffin with what is believed to have been a second coffin inside. Zinc-lined coffins were often used when remains were transported back to their final resting place. The coffin found at the Lewes site had been soldered shut, and then it was placed inside a mahogany coffin. Once lowered into the ground, another box – without a bottom layer – was placed over it. Eventually the wood rotted and the zinc collapsed, flattening what had been inside.

“Zinc doesn't really have any structural strength, which is why it had an inner layer of wood anyway,” Otter said.

The 11th grave discovered was small and square. Otter believes it was intended for a small child; either the bones have deteriorated or the grave was never used.

There is no way to test the bones that were recovered to narrow the time frame of burial. The bones are much too recent to use carbon dating, Otter  said. Instead, he relied on land records and census data to build an ownership history for the property.

“There's all kinds of potential in land records,” he said. “Sometimes you find direct references to cemeteries; it could be in either a deed or a will. We didn't find any of that stuff on this one.”

So to determine who was buried at the site, Otter used detective work to build a circumstantial case.

“I've been focused on digging, not out trying to redo my research to figure out who's who yet,” he said. “There will be time for that once I get all these [remains] out of here.”

The presence of coffins and buttons along with the land history points to the 18th century, he said. Based on land records, he said, it's likely the site is the Wolfe family cemetery.

Otter said there are at least four men among the remains, but because the graves were in poor condition, gender cannot be determined for all of them.

“I was hoping for better preservation, but you never know that kind of stuff until you start digging holes,” Otter said.

According to records, Francis Wolfe bought the land from Thomas Lawrence of Philadelphia in 1746. Francis Wolfe bequeathed the land to his son, Reese Wolfe Sr., in 1754. He then sold the land to Jacob Philips in 1757, but Reese Wolfe Jr. reacquired the land from Philips' estate in 1762. It then remained in the Wolfe family until 1867.

Every grave contained an artifact – a piece of a straight pin or a button. As far as skeletal bones, each plot was different. In some, only a few pieces of bone were left, while in others, the remains were nearly intact, missing only a finger or hand bones, Otter said.

The cemetery is in a wooded area that has not always been forested. Historical maps from 1848 show the area as an open field. Aerial photographs taken in 1937 show the area forested, suggesting the site may have been open when used as a cemetery.

“A lot of land went out of agriculture when they shifted from animals to tractors because animals are a little easier to move around,” Otter said. “They don't get stuck in the mud.”

Trees growing at the cemetery site for more than 200 years may have disturbed through natural growth, Otter said.

It is not uncommon to find human remains and other archaeologically significant artifacts in the Cape Region. With a long history dating back to Dutch settlers in the 1630s and Native Americans much earlier than that, burial grounds long forgotten are sometimes rediscovered as land is developed.

Otter has studied Cape Region sites for nearly 40 years, working primarily in the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay regions.

Delaware code states that when remains are discovered at a construction site, all work must cease immediately, and the medical examiner and director of the Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs must be notified. If the remains are determined to be of Native American descent, treatment and disposition of remains shall be determined by a committee comprising the chief of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe, two members appointed by the chief, the director of the Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, two members appointed by the director and a member appointed by the governor.

When the remains are not those of Native Americans, disposition is determined by next-of-kin. If next-of-kin is unknown, the director determines a plan.

Cliff Diver, owner of the property where the bones were discovered, said the ultimate destination for the remains is the Smithsonian Institute. Before that, though, they will remain in Otter's lab for a few weeks, where they will dry, so they may be properly cleaned and prepared.