an multiple times in there, the author talks about trading glass beads for a deer hide or finger rings for conr orrn or food. so we get an idea of how these things are being used and the exchange rate. if that ship had not gone down in a storm in 1686, our history might well be like new orleans. but presence of la salle and sla salle. awake in spain that they needed to get people up here. and the presence of la salle being -- led to our wonderful hispanic heritage we have today. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring austin texas. learn more about other stops on c-span's cities tour at c-span.org/local content.

you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. >> in the winter of 1863 a south carolina grade of the confederate army camped near montpelier. james madison's homes. matthew reeves takes us on archaeology project striving to learn more how civil war soldiers lived in winter quarters. >> we are located on the north side of the property across route 20 just behind where the gilmore cabin stands. where we're at is at the site of a set of confederate winter encampments from the winter of 1863 and 1864. this is the area we found through archeological surveys the general samuel mcgowan his south carolina trips were located through 1864.

the significance of this time period is that following gettysburg, lee brought his army from northern virginia retreated to the south, came into orange county and eventually went into winter quarters here in orange county with montpelier being the western most extent for the entire army. from montpelier from the archeological data we found and research, what we've been able to establish is general samuel mcgowan was on the property base on the artifacts we found in the camp and huts here. what confirmed this even more is we know general mcgowan had five regiments. we five regimental camps that all contained south carolina buttons. so, the match-up, it's just perfect. what's exciting about that is what we're able to do with knowing what regiments were in this area, it gives us more documentary history we can consult and interpreting or

archeological finds but in turn allows us to find the artifacts we're finding here at the camps and relate it back to what we know general samuel mcgowan was doing during this wintertime. during this period of winter encampment, what the lee's troops were very concerned with is union army pushing through the southern lines and trying to capture richmond. so general samuel mcgowan with other brigades in the area were on constant patrol, monitoring union troop movement to the north. they were essentially ever-ready to be on the march to meet any kind of union incursion. of course, this occurred on may 4, 1864 when grant crosses the rapidan river and lee engages with grant at battle of wilderness, that begins the 1864 over land campaign that eventually ends up in petersburg

and then with richmond the next year. and that, of course, ends the civil war. so, with the camps here what we're interested in interpreting is all sorts of -- of park service sites that are there to interpret the battles, but we're really interested in interpreting the camps here is interpreting everyday life for the soldiers. it said, based on statistics from casualties that five -- out of every six casualties, five occurred in camp from disease, from poor nutrition, just from you know, groups, you know these camps where you had 100 to 120 men -- i'm sorry, 300 to 350 men living in close proximity to each other. if one person gets sick, you know, that sickness is going to spread quite quickly. so what we're looking at with the camps is a way to understand the everyday life in camp. what we've done with the huts here, we had a group of reenact tors, this is present day reenactor group who are --

they're using montpelier and they reconstructed huts based on the arc lolg cal record. -- what we have found from the archaeological record. the huts you see right here are based on the information we found through our excavations in the woods just adjacent to where this company's street is located. what these huts feature, this is confirmed both by the documentary records. these would have had a stick and mud chimney, like you can see right here. not only were the spaces between the -- these sticks dobbed with clay but the chimney was also dobbed with clay to keep it from catching fire. inside what we've got is the hearth is at the ground level. in archaeology is what we found is these structures did not have any raised floor.

the hearth is on the ground which shows the floor was also at grade level as well. this example is an officer's hut. that's why it's taller, slightly larger than the enlisted men's structure behind us. this roof has timbers but has a canvas top to keep the waters from dripping between the timbers. this wooden style roof was quite important for officers because one constant thing that happened in camp is you'd have embers coming out of the chimney. those would land on the roof and catch it on fire. you can imagine if there's -- especially during a wet, cold winter, that was not a fun occurrence to have. the structure itself is -- these were about 12 foot by 12 foot square. you've got smaller trees that would have been growing in the air. actually, the wood lot we've got here today probably is the same

age of wood lot as it was during the troop occupation. you've got trees in this area that range anywhere from 30 to 50 years in age. so, these smaller logs were perfect for building these huts. that's probably why general mcgowan locates these huts in this area because you have perfect size wood, younger trees for building the wood huts. in turn they located in these wood lots because, of course they needed the wood to keep warm during the wintertime. the excavation, the burrow pits, trash pits, we found lots of ash from the hearths. lots of charred wood, which when we sent to a paleon botanist she was able to determine it was a mixture of pine and oak and chest nut and trunk wood. so it's green trees cut for burning.

if you're burning greenwood you're going to get a lot of leftover charred wood. it matches up for telling a story. the other hut we've got back here, this is more a hut for enlisted men style. this would be lower to the ground, less logs being used. the canvas roof is put across bat tons but not a solid roof in between. the size is roughly the same but where you'd have maybe a staff -- an officer in the officer's tent with maybe the family, in the enlisted men's tent you'd have three to four enlisted men in a 12 foot by 12 foot area. can you see the small hearth where the firebox would have been at grade. this would have been quite tight for three to four men but then the combined -- having four men in this hut would help with the heat situation.

and the hearth -- what we found with archaeology is hearth in enlisted men's hut was maybe three-quarters the size of the officer's hut. they're obviously burning less wood than would have been rationed. this was a big concern during this weekend. general mcgowan's troops had to move closer to orange at the end of january because they exhausted their wood supply. when they moved here to montpelier, each regiment was assigned their own wood lot and that was rationed for the remantder of the winter. they had to worry about wood. they had to worry about a good source of water. we'll go back to the actual reg mental hut sites next. what we found with archaeology is what's talked about in the written accounts is these troops were living off low grade bacon or hard tack, which looks like hard crackers that were coarse

dough and little in the way of fresh meat. from the archaeology we found pulverized burnt bone and that's it in terms of food remains. so what's reflected in the documentary record is also supported from the archaeology. you think of existing on cornmeal and fat back for the winter, you're going to have dietary problems. it's no wonder these camps were literally something to be survived. you imagine having, you know having poor food supplies but then at any moment being -- you know, constant awareness you have to go on the march. it would have been quite stressful. it's all something we're trying to build a much more complete picture with our excavations and study of these camps. the soldiers would build these huts, cut the timbers 14 feet in

length. the notches and weight combined keeps them together. then you have these spaces between the logs where you would have the wind and weather could pass in. they would take chunks of wood rocks. what's called chinking, put that between the logs and then fill in this space with this dob to create, you know, a fairly weatherproof seal for the structures. same with these logs for the chimney well. you can see what they've mixed into this clay is the straw. that serves as a binder to keep the play together and also helps with washing during the wintertime with the rain storms. you also notice this is back away from the structure.

that's on purpose to keep the heat away from the main building. and also if this chimney catches on fire, what they would do is they would pull this away from the structure as rapidly as possible so the whole kit 'n' kaboodle didn't go down in flames. one thing we have records of during the encampment, one gentlemen, berry benson kept a diary, published by his sister years later after the war and they would talk about practical jokes that would go on in the camps. they would throw percussion down the hearth and you would have three or four men running out of the cabin after the hearth exploded. we thought it was a cute story until we were excavating the sites, we found percussion caps. it was fine to find that connection.

when you're doing the excavations and you find that kind of personal connection between, you know, a story mentioned in the documentary record or just evidence for a single opportunity, it makes archaeology an exciting endeavor to be engaged in. you have rows in the downsloped direction to the north. you have enlisted men. on this side of the path to the right is where the officers' quarters are located. a total of ten company streets we recorded through archaeology archeological survey. each of those ten company streets has ten huts in each

one. so ten streets by ten huts is 100 all together. this layout is similar right here. this is a map of a south carolina regiment that was drawn in the winter of 1862-63. we think this was the exact layout of mcgowan's camp. where you have companies of enlisted men. company officers at the head of each street and regimental officers at the top of the layout. this shows a guard house here. what we found in the camps that we surveyed, all five of them, is there are latrines downslope. this was for health and sanitation reasons. they were aware then keeping your latrines downhill from the troops was a good idea. also what we found is latrines

tend to be in the opposite direction from the streams which is their sort of potable water. they had a good -- somewhat of a good idea of how to keep sanitation on a good level, but then just for general sickness the most common form of disease during this time period was dysentery. and that was, you know -- you're going to get dehydrated. you're going to be more susceptible to illness with that. and so, again, this -- what they were -- what they lacked was a varied diet during this wintertime period. and probably in the springtime in march and april, when the greens started to come up, it was probably like heaven for them because the poke greens coming up here native to virginia, these are all south

carolina men that were in the -- from the hills of south carolina, from the piedmont similar to this area, so they would have been very familiar with foraging during this time. and you've got orange county that might have had about 5,000 residents at the time. and you've got 60,000 troops occupying a rural area. i mean, things would have been picked clean. when we first found these camps, we interviewed one gentleman who had lived here -- he had memories going back to 1950, buck smith. when we asked him about the camps here, he remembered going through these woods, finding confederate belt buckles. and he his friends used to throw them at each other. he wished he would have saved those. when asked if he had any structures in these camps, he didn't remember any being present. this is the map showing the overall street layout. we just came from this direction walking up the trail to this point right here. and then we selected this point for the sign because you've got an excellent layout of the huts that can be seen with the depressions here.

so, what we've got here is these remnants of rail fencing is the layout where the huts were. how we were able to identify the camps is from the depressions you see here in the ground. you've got a depression right there. you've got another depression that's right here. you've got a slight mound in this area. where the hearth would have been. then another depression right here. and this just keeps on going in line for about, you know, ten depressions down the slope. and so what you've got here, where the depressions are, are the burrow pits the soldiers initially dug out and used that clay to dob between the gaps in the logs once they chinked them. once this hole was here, rather than fill it back in, they left it open, as they burnt wood, accumulated hearth ash, they would take that ash out and

deposit it in that burrow pits. and if they had ceramics that broke, they put them here, too. these were essentially trash pits. during a rain storm, these would serve as sumps to draw water away from surrounding streets and more importantly from inside the huts themselves. it helped to keep the water down for the living areas. what we found from the layout of these depressions, and most of the streets, these depressions are about 16 feet apart. between the depressions, what you have are these mounds of stone. when you excavate these depressions out, they're about four feet in width. 12 feet in run before you get to the next depression. that's the exact size described in caldwell's history for the size of these structures. what we've been able to do is

establish how these streets of huts were laid out. one thing we found with these depressions is -- or between the depressions you have these stone mounds, when you excavate the stone mounds, you eventually get down to where the actual hearth was. how you know you've gotten to the hearth level, not only do you find ash but the burnt red clay from where the soldiers have been burning their fires. what we found in hearth ash is the same thing we found in depressions. in the hearth ash and what remained in the hearth from the last fire that was burned, we found small nails. there are probably nails -- these are burnt nails from being used from box container, wooden boxes from issues of hard tack and other supplies. those would be broken up and then used for kindling for burning wood. when we excavated, we would go through the duff of the forest floor, all the rotted leaves from the past 140-odd years.

then we got down to a layer of scattered clay, which we finally figured out was the dob from the structures, the walls and the chimneys. below that is where we started to come across the artifacts. so, that clay was on top of the living surface from the civil war, which showed that was from the destruction of the huts. how we discovered these camps is, you know, we've mapped them out using archeological survey. initially we were pointed to the presence of these camps by local hunters that told us about the presence of these camps in the montpelier woods. once we knew what to look for, we started mapping in these depressions that i just showed you. and by mapping those in, we were able to gain an understanding of the layout of these streets. for the winter camps, we're able to define the extent of these camps basically by the surface remains. what makes these camps so special is that after these are abandoned following, you know, the civil war, when the troops

went off to wilderness, you know, local civilians came in, residents came in and salvaged what they could, but this area remained in woods. so, throughout the 19th century, the early 20th century, when the dupontes bought the land, they never did any clear-cutting, they didn't return it to agriculture, they left it as wood lots. so all the subtle mounds you see here from the hearths, the sdee pregnancies, the burrow pits they're all just as they were from the civil wartime period. if area had been plowed, all of this would have been disturbed. you wouldn't have seen these depressions and mounds because as farmers came across the stones, the workers would have cleared them away and piled them to the edge of the field. being unplowed, this is a virtual, you know, archeological laboratory waiting to be, you know, tested to see -- for example, did -- do all the individuals who lived in these individual huts, the soldiers, did they have the same type of goods.

you know, the ceramics, the type of evidence for food or is it different between huts, between the different regimental camps so there's differences in access to food remains, to food stores, which can be seen in the presence of preserved jars, both glass and ceramic? one thing we found with the excavations here, on average we excavated four of the huts in the camp here. per hut we were finding about one ceramic or glass vessel per hut, which is very, very low. when you go to the -- talking to folks that had excavated some huts in culpepper county, union camps are occupied at this same exact time period. they recall finding 10, 20 bottles per hut site. the union camps you probably have settlers coming in, selling goods, selling preserves selling condiments, items that would be, you know, stored in bottles. those battles would be discarded in the trash pits.

here the only ceramics we found in enlisted tent are alkaline jugs and jars. they are only manufactured in south carolina and georgia. what it appears, they're bringing their supplies up from south carolina. these troops are being supplied by the state militias, not through some, you know centralized redistribution system. and this is recounted in caldwell's letters where they talk about the south carolina relief -- ladies relief societies sending clothing, that they were retro fitting into uniforms. some of the surveys we've actually found lead south carolina buttons. these aren't usually issued buttons manufactured by skoeville manufacturing company, they're brass 37. they were splitting them open, using them for a mold to make a lead button and using the lead button to retro fit their

uniforms from civilian clothing into a uniform. so, there's all these various lines of evidence we were able to put together to build a much larger story about what was going on. people often ask that, can i come onto the property? the answer is no, but can you come to our museum at the archaeology lab and see many of the artifacts we've found. all the artifacts we find, we keep here on the property. the more unique ones we've put on display in the archaeology lab. this is the alkaline-glazed jug we were talking about yesterday which came from one of the civil war trash pits, one of the burrow pits. we know this is alkaline glazed based on the green color and how

it's running down here. this is characteristic of an alkaline glaze in a stoneware vessel. and this sort of alkaline vessel is not made in virginia during the 19th century. it only occurs in south carolina and georgia. of course, the south carolina is the operative because that's where the troops are coming from that occupied the mcgowan camp. this was found by a local relic hunter in the north woods. so, these are one -- one of these items that -- about 30 years ago, if you walked through the woods at montpelier, you'd find lots and lots of artifacts. or more likely 40 years ago. some of the artifacts we found in our own metal defect tors -- in our own metal detectors survey this is the range of , items in a couple of areas we've been able to find larger items.

i mean, this is -- this is probably from three years worth of survey all across the property. i mean, these are unusual finds to find out in the woods today. but everything from a scabbard tip you'd put in a bayonet and buttons. most of the buttons we found out in the woods are union buttons. for example, this union cavalry button that were found in the northern part of the camps on the property. this one is a north carolina button. this has the state seal on it. probably an enlisted man's button because there's no guilding on it. an example of guilding can be seen in this cavalry button. again, the guilding would be gold plated onto the brass button. this would allow officers to not have to shine their button whereas enlisted men would are to shine their brass buttons.

part of a toe plate for a boot right there. large assortment of items from pack recrudements to gun items to swortd hangers, all part of the camps we've been surveying and excavating at montpelier. what these artifacts tell us is the history of the camps. we found -- these are the unique bullets but in the summer camp we found lots and lots of bullets. it seems in the winter bullets especially mcgowan's camps, boxes of cartridges were collected. it was winter, they didn't want the cartridges getting wet so probably the quartermaster would collect those for keeping them dry. in the summer months, especially when troops were expected to be on the march at any time, they had their cartridge boxes with them at camp. they would either lose bullets

-- in the case of this one, it's a confederate bullet that's been melted and they would use cartridges with gunpowder and the bullet to actually start their campfire. what we do -- when we're surveying these areas, when we're trying to locate these camps, essentialpecially the -- trying to locate these camps, especially the summer camps that don't have well-defined features visible on the ground surface is we'll have metal detector specialists go out and on a gridded area metal defect detect. when they come across a history, an historic artifact, what they'll do is excavate it. if it's an historic art fact and not a pop top from 1960, they'll put it into a bag, they have a gps unit they map in the hit location, put a flag there. and both the flag, the artifact in its bag and gps unit all have

the same hit unit. these are one of these hits from probably five years ago. the flag is disintegrating. we mapped this in with a laser unit. this lance crosby 924. this is his 924th hit. this is the exact location where it came from. and we leave these flags in place just to mark their location, if we ever need to find them again. again, we've got -- we mapped these in not only with the gps but also with the laser transit so we know to within a fraction of an inch where all these artifacts came from. any of the artifacts that come out of here, they all tell a story. by knowing the exact position where they come from, we're able to link it in to not only the regimental camp but individual huts and keep that assembliage together for interpreting.

so it could be -- even somebody digging up a nail could ruin the story. we're trying to preserve the camps for the future. for future grants and funding to do more complete excavation of the larger set of camps that are in the woods here. >> you can learn more about archaeology at montpelier by visiting bond chillier -- vis iting montpelier.org. explore the recent findings and projects. 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of the national museum of american indian act. it establish the nationally theme of the american indian on the national mall as part of this missoni and. -- as part of the smithsonian. it encourage the smithsonian to retu