HEAR YE! HEAR YE!

July 2012
SOUTH BERWICK, Maine – It was small and thin.  Caked with dirt and found a few feet deep, it looked like a stone and could easily have been discarded.

But, out on her first day digging at the possible site of a seventeenth century tavern, Whitney Parrish wiped off the dirt and saw a silver gleam and intricate markings.  She had found a Spanish coin, often called a “piece of eight.” (Continued below)

“I am so very excited about the find,” said Parrish, who is working on a degree in anthropology and archaeology at the University of Southern Maine, and commutes from Portland to take part in the Old Berwick Historical Society’s archaeology project directed by Dr. Neill De Paoli.

De Paoli explained that in the 1600s and early 1700s, a shortage of currency led to Spanish coins making their way into the English colonies after being minted in South America and traded in the Caribbean. He has seen only a few in his 35 years of experience as a historical archaeologist in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

“This find is an example of how an artifact helps tell the story of a region’s economy and people’s livelihood hundreds of years ago,” said De Paoli, adding that historic information, not monetary value, is the goal of the archaeology project.

“On the nearby Salmon Falls River, at a place called Pipe Stave Landing, local materials for making barrels shipped through Portsmouth to the Caribbean, and products like rum came back.  Someone involved with that trade, directly or indirectly, must have come here to Old Fields, the oldest part of what is now South Berwick.”

The coin has indistinct markings but reveals the digits 6 and 8 and a cross characteristic of Spanish coins of the 1600s and early 1700s.

De Paoli is adding the coin to other evidence that the site was the dwelling and tavern of Humphrey and Mary Spencer from about 1696 until 1727.  A later house, home today to South Berwick residents Paula and Harvey Bennett, stands a few feet from where archaeologists are digging on their property.

“Perhaps,” De Paoli speculated, “the coin was lost by someone enjoying a tankard of ale at the Spencer tavern.”

In addition to the coin, the dig so far has turned up foundation stones as well as fragments of clay pipes and stoneware dishes and flasks, and other artifacts supporting the theory that the site was a tavern three centuries ago.  At that time, South Berwick was not yet a separate town. Today’s Berwick, South Berwick and North Berwick were collectively called Berwick, and are now nearing the tricentennial of their separation from Kittery in 1713.

Parrish is one of 16 enrollees and four field assistants working in a three-week field school De Paoli organized to explore Old Fields, an area that at that time was a small hamlet of several homes, a tavern, meetinghouse, burial ground, wharves, and expansive hay fields.

Historical documents suggest this locale contained a fortified garrison during the conflict-ridden 1690s and early 1700s. In 1690 and 1691, Wabanaki war parties in separate incidents attacked the Spencer garrison and two men working in a nearby field.

DePaoli is an adjunct professor at Southern Maine Community College and has devoted most of his career to the study of English settlement and Anglo-Indian and English-French relations in early northern New England.

The current field school ends on July 13, but volunteers are needed to process artifacts at the Counting House Museum during the coming months. No experience is necessary, and information is available by contacting the historical society at 207-384-0000.

The Old Berwick Historical Society owns the Counting House Museum, which exhibits artifacts from another 17^th century homestead, that of Humphrey and Lucy Chadbourne.  The museum is open on weekend afternoons from 1:00-4:00 pm through the end of October, and year round by appointment.