landscape. i've been to yosemite in california. and more than anything the scale is just so different. but each park is so unique. i mean, i don't think one is like another and so it's the tapestry of them all that really is the remarkable contribution to this country. all day today american history tv is marking the national park service centennial. we talk with members of congress about the national parks and historic sites in their states. this is american history tv only on c-span3. the 1600-acre national battlefield is about 45 miles northwest of the u.s. capital. the national park service property includes the best family farm, built in the 1790s by a family of french caribbean immigrants who owned about 90 slaves. c-span met joy beasley to learn how remnants of the 200-year-old

slave quarters were discovered in 2003 and partially excavated in the summer of 2010. >> we are at the best farm, which is named the best farm after the tenant that occupied this farm during the civil war. but what we know today as the best farm forms the southern 274 acres of what was originally 748-acre plantation. and that plantation was known as laramie taj and established by a family of french planters who came to maryland in 1793 from the colony of san doming which we know today as haiti. the family came to maryland to escape civil unrest that was associated with the slave uprising that began in san doming in 1791 and also with the french revolution. the best farm was acquired by the national park service in

1993, so it's a fairly recent acquisition. and beginning in about 1998, 1999 is when we started doing a substantial amount of historical architectural and archaeological research here at the farm. we were aware that there had been at one time a substantial enslaved population. we knew a little bit about the family and their origins and their relocation here to maryland, but what we didn't know was very much more than that about the family. we had very little information about the enslaved population. and certainly one of the key research questions with regard to the archaeological research was where were these 90 enslaved people living. i had a graduate student who was working with me. and part of her thesis research focused specifically on the family occupation, trying to understand their origins in san

doming and the context of their relocation here to maryland, and she managed to uncover a pretty obscure account written by a polish expatriate traveling around the eastern seaboard the century. he was a die rest and kept sort of a travel memoir of all of his travels and he happened to be traveling on the georgetown road which we know today as maryland route 355, although at that time it was quite a bit further to the west. so much closer than where it is today. he was traveling from georgetown to fredrick in june of 1798 and happened to pass by this plantation and gave an account of it. one of the things that he talks about is one stone house with upper stories painted white which is a building that still stands on the farm. he also referred to a row of wooden houses which we took as a reference to slave quarters. one of the things we uncovered

and one of the things referenced in the travellers account were there were several court cases brought against the family alleging mistreatment of their slaves. that was something that was very surprising to us. i don't know of have many instances in which that actually happened where charges were brought against people for mistreating their slaves. in maryland and elsewhere presumab presumably, there were laws on the books that governed the treatment of enslaved people but they really weren't enforced. one of the things we found was between 1796 and 1806 there were at least eight instances they were accused of mistreating their slaves in different ways. because of the way he describes of wooden houses with the stone houses with the upper stories painted white it sounded like this row of wooden houses was in front of the primary building

cluster. which is a pattern that's not typically seen in this area. it's much more common in the deep south or in the caribbean and happened to be out in an agricultural field that's 40 plus acres and was under active cultivation and was an area that had not been investigated arc logically. that was in 2003 and we were coming to the end of the multiyear archeological study and the end of our funding for archeology here at best farm. we did a systemic metal detector survey. what we did end up uncovering was a large dense kind of linear deposit of late 18th, early 19th century domestic artifacts. nails, hardware, buttons, coins. and actually the deposit of

artifact was so dense, in the metal detector targets we were finding glassware and ceramics. based on the kinds of artifacts we were uncovering and the date range of them, i was fairly certain at that time that we had identified the site of the slave quarters associated laramy toj. that funding came in in fiscal year 2010. what we're looking at is what we call structure b or the second of the six structures that are laid out in a row. the way that these buildings manifest themselves is -- what you see here is a foundation for an external stone chimney similar to the external stone chimney you see on the secondary house.

it's kind of a c-shaped mortared stone foundation that formed the foundation for the chimney. then you can see here two smaller stone piers which would have formed the corners. there would have been piers like this probably at all the corners and some intermediary piers as well. that's what they would have laid the logs on to form the wooden structure. so they probably were one story, story and a half buildings. they measured about 20 by 34 feet in dimensions with this external stone chimney on the south elevation. very simple, very expedient structures that could have been constructed quickly and with simple, easily affordable materials. they're all about the same dimensio dimensions. they're equal distance from one another.

one one of these hearth foundations are exactly 66 feet apart. they're on the exact same orientation or access as the structures on the farm. literally within a couple of inches. it's a very ordered landscape. these buildings were laid out in a very precise fashion. they actually do form quite literally the row of wooden houses that is mentioned in the traveler's account. our first starting point was what's called a shuttle test pit survey. and it's exactly what it sounds like, it's a hole about the width of a shovel blade excavated on an interval over a site. in our case, we excavated a hole about every 20 feet over the entire sort of 2/3 of an acre that make up this area. you know, in a shovel test pit, all of that soil is screened and

what you're looking for are artifact concentrations, soil changes, concentrations of stone or brick or mortar, anything that would suggest cultural event going on below the ground surface. another thing that we did is we were fortunate enough to do some remote sensing. we were able to have access to a surface penetrating radar device which is able to see or identify archeological features below grade and particularly adept in identifying foundations or similar type features. during the course of the surface penetrating radar survey we identified two additional features and where you see that cluster of blue flacgs is where one was and that appears to be the southern most structure. the hearth foundation was the first thing that was fully

exposed and we started expanding out. once we knew we weren't dealing with a continuous stone foundation the question was how did they construct these buildings? we uncovered these two stone piers that formed the corners of the building. that's the point at which you start to be able to some degree understand and interpret how they were constructed and to try to uncover the whole thing. all the funding for this project came from a program that's called the cultural resource preservation program. we also were fortunate, the secretary of the interior has created a new funding source that's called the youth intake program and that's a competitive funding source that's aimed at getting young people interested in and connected with their

national parks and providing them with on-the-job training that might consider them a career in the national park service. so i was award some of the yip funding which allowed me to hire several of the student interns involved in the project. this is jordan, he's a graduate student at american university and this is alex, he's a senior at howard university. >> i'm of asian descent which is why i wanted to do this project. it's a extremely unique place. you don't think of a french family coming here, bringing slaves with them. i was incredibly moved by the story and it turned out to be really great. >> well, i got involved with the project through american university. i had heard about the project and applied and met with joy and was able to come here.

i found it to be a very fantastic program. especially to learn more about the trade of archeology and the methodologies involved. i heard a lot about many, many things, especially shovel test pits. >> this was a crash course in archeology. you learn priceless information, you learn the administrate -- trade and you learn how to look at the world and history in a completely different light. >> personally, i -- there was a lot of interesting artifacts found on site. i was mainly the person digging in the units. >> like jordan said a lot was bricks and mortar but we also found the coins and we found a horse bit which was over there. a lot of animal bones which kind

of led us to realize what they were eating. we found a lot of glassware and a lot of -- one bead, one tiny bead which is really tiny but very beautiful. >> this is the basement of the circuit 1830, one of the historic structures at the park and this is where we do a lot of our on-site laboratory work. the acid-free boxes that you see there, the artifacts from this year's season, all boxed up, rebagged and ready to be cataloged an analyzed. we have pulled out kind of a handful of artifacts that are somewhat representative of the kinds of objects that we've been uncovering out there at the site. everything from things like different kinds of coins.

this is a u.s. large cent. these are spanish. those are silver spanish coins. a lot of buttons. this is really finally made shell button. probably the most common kind of button we find are these one piece flat buttons with a wire shank. very common in the 18th and early part of the 19th century. more two-piece buttons. that one has a silver visible on it. other personal items. this is a clay marble. that was probably a toy. also a lot of architectural debris. this is a complete hand-made brick, also nails, hand rot nails mostly. we find a lot of nails. other kinds of architectural hardware. mortar. brick fragments.

architectural type debris. glassware and ceramics. this is a nice olive win bottleneck. this is the finished part and the lip. different kinds of ceramics. everything from the more utilitarian, more produced red wares or stonewares to more refined english made porcelains and hand-painted pearlwares. produced in england and elsewhere. also, tobacco pipe fragments. in large quantities. food remains, bones. this is a tooth probably from a cow. a lot of food remains. oyster shell. muscle shells. those kinds of things. this is all the information. it's really critical for us to

be able to know where all these objects came from, their context. everything is kept separate either by excavation unit, by strata, all of those kinds of details and that's part of the internal record keeping and that's part of our analysis and understanding of the data. that's a big part of archeology. people always think of archeology as the act of going out and digging but that's only a small piece. the really important work happens in the analysis of the data and the interpretation. you know, there's a lot of information. obviously, everything from information about construction details or the architecture of the site. a lot of these objects are highly dateable. obviously the coins being the most obvious ones but also things like buttons, glasswares and ceramics. all these were popular at specific moments in history.

technological changes help provide occupational dates for a site. that's very important information. access to consumer goods. we're certainly interested in the kinds of things that these people had and used for their daily life. you know, one question might be these english tablewares. where did those come from? were these hand-me-downs that the family gave them for their own use? did these people have ways to make a bit of money on their own and be able to actually acquire and purchase these kinds of consumer goods on their own? these are all the kinds of questions and things that we're interested in and all of that kind of helps us get more at what the day to day lives of these people were like. all of these artifacts will be cataloged which is a system of recording recording attributes, information about all these

artifacts. that information is data-entered into a database and we'll start analyzing that data and looking at patterns within that data, trying to say something about what these artifacts mean within the larger context of the site history. that's all the information we'll be working on over the course of the wintertime. there are a lot of known reference material out there that historical archeologists in general use for dating objects, not just for ceramics but for glasswares and other objects as -- just like now, technology changes over time and oftentimes technology changes down to a certain date, like a modern day example would be not too long ago sony stopped making the walkman. and you know, i think they first started making walkmans in like

1979 and first you had the big clunky walkman and they got smaller over time and then you had the one that is you could put a cd in and so on and so forth. that's technology that changed over time. so you can identify and research how that technology changed over time. they stopped making the walkman in the u.s. in 2010. you have a 1979 to 2010 period of use. that doesn't mean nobody out there is using their walkman anymore. but you sort of are going to have a period of time in which the popularity of the walkman peaked. it's really a similar thing with other kinds of objects. all of the artifacts from the national capital region of the national park service go to a center facility called the museum resource center in maryland. two days a week we're doing some of our cataloging and lab work in that facility which is closer

to washington which allows some of the students to be involved in that part of the process on a volunteer basis. that's our -- where all the artifacts will go into permanent storage. we would like to be able to develop permanent exhibits that will focus on this aspect of the park's history and obviously we would probably select some of these artifacts to be incorporated into those exhibit displays as well. and we can access them usually sometimes for black history month for example. we'll do a little temporary exhibit at the visitor center that will focus on some aspect of african-american history here at the park. this year we'll probably develop a temporary exhibit that will probably feature some artifacts that we'll have at the visit center. >> how did you get involved in this work? >> i wanted to be an archeologist for as long as i can remember, since i was a little kid.

my family has a second home out in new mexico and i spent a lot of time over the summer at different points in my life out there. we used to always go out and pick up artifacts. there's archeological sites out there. and that's what got me interested. i was fortunate my parents were supportive of my archeology habit and i went to archeology camp as a kid. sometimes that always stayed with me. a lot of people will say when they find out i'm an archeologist they'll say i went there when i was a kid and i guess i never outgrew that. when i got to college i chose to major in anthropology and pursue a career in archeology and fortunate i've been able to do that. here in the park service, even though i'm training as an archeolo archeology, it's a small part of what i do, i'm also responsible

for the historic preservation work that goes on in the park as well. all the historic buildings and cultural landscapes i focus on as well. >> what are some of the myths about archeology that are out there? >> people always ask me if i eve been to egypt. the question that i get the most, sometimes people mix up archeology and paleontology and ask me if i dig up dinosaurs and obviously that's a different field of study. people always ask what's the most interesting thing you have found. it's difficult to really distill it down to one object. because at the end of the day, it's not about the objects themselves, it's about the story and the interpretation of those objects. for me, it doesn't just come down to what's the most interesting thing that you found. i've had the opportunity to work on a number of very interesting projects and certainly the story

of the slave village site is the most important and interesting project that i've had the opportunity to be involved with in my career. >> if a young person out there thinks they want to be an orkologist, what advice would you give them? >> i would advise them to stick with it. hang in there. you can get a job doing this. it's not the easiest thing. i would advise them to make sure that they go to a good college. they're going to want to pursue an advanced degree. probably not just stop with an undergraduate degree and just hang in there and give it a shot. the national park service is a great agency. there's a lot of opportunities in the national park service to do this kind of work and other historic preservation work. i certainly always encourage folks to consider the national park service. >> somebody is out there working and find one of these fragments or a coin, describe the scene.

is it sifting or is it digging at the actual location? how do they find these things? >> a little bit of both. all the dirt goes through a screen. so we screen everything we dig up. sometimes as you're excavating, using a trowel or whatever, you'll uncover objects in in si situ. it's exciting for people. we work with a lot of volunteers. obviously over the summer we'll have history camps or student groups come out and we'll have them help us out and help with the screening. there's really that sort of excitement and moment of discovery. and a lot of the interns i think that's -- that thrill of discovery is part of what keeps you going during the course of yet another 110 degree day out there. you know, a lot of people tell

me the part that connects them is knowing they're the first person to touch this object in the past 200 years or whatever the case may be. i think it's really part of that tangible connection to the past that people get excited about. we're hoping -- at this point we don't have funding for any additional field work which is unfortunate because i feel like we have just sort of scratched the surface out here and there's a lot more information potential with this site. it's very unique particularly for this area, the midatlantic region. you don't typically see slavery being practiced on the scale it was being practiced here. i think i mentioned that 90 slaves is roughly ten times the number of enslaved individuals you would have expected to be living here. so that's extremely unusual

circumstance for this area. well like i said, there are about 20 by 34 feet. just under 700 square feet of living space. if there were only six structures total, one can assume there was somewhere between as many as 12 or 15 people living in each of these dwelling houses which sounds like a lot. so i would guess or assume that these may have been extended family units for example living together. multiple generations of families. like i say, these are pretty utilitarian, simple, expediently constructed buildings. and they probably were constructed about the same time as the secondary house and it was probably the vincent-deer family's first order of business to get these buildings constructed and get the people

housed so they could start working the land and being productive and generating income for the vincent-deer family. there are not a lot of instances out there where you have a complete collection of multiple dwelling houses preserved in an archeological context. so there's a great deal of research potential here in terms of understanding more about the context and the study of slavery in general. there are not that many national park service units that have this kind of resource preserved. we're just fortunate that as a result of this land being set aside and preserved as a result of the battle, we also have these other stories and other resources that is are preserved as well. even though the plantation was long gone by 1864 when the battle was fought, the story and the enslaved people and the vincent-deer family is still a great platform from which to

talk about slavery as a causative aspect of the civil war. at the park level we're going to be working on developing some new interpretive programs and other interpretive products that will talk about the history of the site and this project and sort of start to look at african-american experiences here at the battlefield in general. we'll also be working on the development of some web-based resources. again that will help tell this story and help present this information to the public. in the longer term what we like to have are actually separate permanent exhibits that will focus on kind of the broader historic context of the battle and the civil war. obviously slavery and plantation life would be a big part of the discussion. down the road, again, funding dependent that would be something we would like to have. should we be fortunate enough to get some additional funding to

do more field work, that's certainly the goal. if not, we'll just do the best we can with the resources that we have and obviously, you know, almost 400 units of the national park service out there and everybody has research needs and compliance needs. so there's never enough money to go around. just like in any sort of federal funding process, we had to wait our turn. i think alex had mentioned to me living in washington, d.c. you think of the national park service, you think monuments or mountains or geysers and one of the things that was helpful with this project was it helped some of these students get a sense of the diversity of resources that the national park service preserves and i think maybe get them a little bit interested maybe in a career in the national park service or a career in archeology or if not, hopefully if these guys go on to do something else for a career

or to work for a different agency, hopefully they'll always look back on this experience and they'll sort of think about the national parks in a different way and maybe be more sort of engaged in and interested in that stewardship aspect of what the national parks do. >> this american artifacts program was recorded in november of 2010. to learn more about the best farm slave village, log on to nps.gov/mono. a drop down menu for history and culture and follow the link to best farm slave village. >> this weekend on american history tv on cspan3. saturday evening at 7:00 eastern from president lincoln's cottage in washington, d.c. we'll have a conversation with candace hooper, women who influenced the

civil war for better and for worse. >> you can see that, too, women have a means of re-enforcing either the best in their husbands or the worst. and that's what this study is. >> then at 10:00 on real america, the 1953 film "american frontier." >> they flash the word from the field to the productive office and from there to the central office in oklahoma. day and night our little telephone board was lit up like a christmas tree. calls from new york, california, houston, bit by bit we realized how big it was. >> providing financial benefits for farmers and was funded by the american petroleum institute. sunday morning at 11:00 a.m., the life and legacy of novelist, journalist and photographer jack

london and how his novel influenced generations of writers. >> he always looked back to the natural land to his ranch, to the beautiful scenery in california and elsewhere in the south pacific. to center himself and to find release and relief from the rigors and the deppry days of the cities. >> at 6:00 eastern we visit the military aviation museum in virginia beach. >> this airplane among a couple other types basically taught all the military i've yaters how to fly. and in guys never even saw an airplane coming from the farms and anywhere you could think of and the first airplane they saw was the boeing steerman. >> for our complete american history tv schedule go to cspan.org. >> next, american history tv