Posted on 06/24/2011 9:59:35 AM PDT by decimon
UMD Team Finds Clues to Children's Lives and Education
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - An archaeological team from the University of Maryland is unearthing a unique picture of the Baltimore-area's early Irish immigrants - of city children taught to read and write at home before widespread public education and child labor laws, as well as insular rural residents who resisted assimilation for one hundred years.
The excavation in the city represents the first formal archaeological research to focus on Baltimore's early Irish settlement and labor force.
"Behind the closed doors of their modest Baltimore homes, beyond the view of their bosses, these unskilled railroad workers maintained a rich social, religious and family life," says University of Maryland archaeologist Stephen Brighton, whose students just finished digging in the backyards of 19th century Baltimore immigrants.
Now, Brighton's team has begun work excavating another Baltimore-area site - a small settlement in Texas, Maryland that resisted adopting a more mainstream American lifestyle up to the Eisenhower years. This is the third year Brighton's team has worked there.
"These people helped build Maryland's infrastructure and supply materials for the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol, yet their voices have been muted in history," Brighton adds. "We're beginning to reconstruct their inner world."
CHILDHOOD IN BALTIMORE
Brighton and University of Maryland undergraduates participating in his archaeological field school spent the past three weeks digging behind the Irish Shrine in Baltimore - three homes along Lemmon Street in Baltimore dating to the 1850s. They stand across the street from the B&O Railroad Museum, once headquarters of the line. Most of the Lemmon Street immigrants performed semi- or unskilled labor for the B&O.
The archaeological team identified and excavated privies - pits that served as a receptacle for family trash and waste. Among the objects recovered: writing slates (the kind used by young children to practice the alphabet) and lead pencils, doll parts, toy tea cups, dinner plates, as well as a number of buttons.
"The children of these working class families were literate, or at the very least learning to read and write," Brighton concludes. "The children had at least some leisure or play time - even in an era when children from the working class were viewed as part of the family's economic structure and put out to work at an extremely young age."
The cache of children's materials on Lemmon Street tracks with earlier discoveries in the rural community of Texas, Maryland, and adds to his confidence that this is a representative find.
"We're looking back at a period in American history well before child labor laws," Brighton says. "To have a large collection of toys from two working class sites illustrates that many children, at least for a time, were allowed to be children. We may take it for granted today, but in that era there were few guarantees."
TEXAS, MARYLAND: 'UNLIKE ANYTHING I'VE SEEN IN THE BIG CITIES'
At one time, Texas, Maryland was a major hub for quarrying limestone and marble, and provided materials to build the first 150 feet of the Washington Monument, the portico of the U.S. Capitol, and the State House in Annapolis.
Brighton's team - excavating there for a third summer - is targeting privies from the backyards of some of the earliest homes in Texas. The buildings are gone, but the rear lots remain undisturbed, and may hold clues to the first 50 years of Irish life in the community.
From his previous digs, Brighton's already learned quite a bit about the distinctive patterns of life there.
Irish immigrants settled around 1846 and formed a tight community - one that he has found persisted into the 1950s, when quarries closed or consolidated, and work dried up. Those economic changes disrupted the fabric of family life there.
"The patterns in Texas are unlike anything I've seen in big cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore," Brighton explains.
"For about a century, this community remained highly insular, and the families intermarried. They were able to maintain an invisible wall that separated them from the larger community and preserved their traditional ways. In the big cities, the Irish had blended in and adopted American lifestyles by the close of the 19th century," Brighton says.
His previous excavations here uncovered two large icehouses and a privy. He recovered ceramic plates, teacups, chamber pots, glass beer and medical bottles, combs, buttons, jewelry, beads and religious medals.
Other evidence came from census records that showed several generations living under the same roof. Even after children married, they remained with their parents and eventually inherited the house.
FAMILY DINNERS: Ceramic plates were used at family dinners where everyone in the house gathered to share a simple meal, to bond, and transmit their cultural legacy. At the time, most Americans tended to socialize by holding large dinner parties, but Brighton didn't find the kind of serving dishes and utensils that would have been needed for such events. He concludes that the Irish immigrants didn't socialize that way and kept dining a family affair.
SOCIAL TEAS: Instead of dinner parties, the Irish brought the Old World tradition with them of socializing over tea. Over time, they maintained this pattern. Extensive tea service items testify to the practice.
RELIGIOUS LIFE: Early on, the Irish immigrants in Texas built St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, an imposing structure still in use. Records indicate extensive family involvement in various church-related activities, such as benevolent societies. Brighton also recovered religious medallions - further evidence, he says, of the centrality of religion in family and community life.
PHOTO OP
Brighton's team will continue excavations in Texas, Maryland until July 8. Media may arrange for a tour by contacting Brighton.
TEXAS BLOG
Brighton and his students prepared a blog documenting their excavations at Texas. More online: http://sites.google.com/site/archaeologyoftexasmaryland/.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Stephen Brighton University of Maryland archaeologist 617-312-9212 (cell) sbrighton@anth.umd.edu
Neil Tickner Senior Media Relations Associate University of Maryland 301-405-4622 ntickner@umd.edu
Clan mine ping
NO WAI! Nobody ever learned to read, write, and add before compulsory government schools opened! Everyone knows that!
Why not study the communities of immigrants (some of which are here illegally) who refuse to assimilate today?
"These people helped build Maryland's infrastructure and supply materials for the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol, yet their voices have been muted in history," Brighton adds. i>
Um, if the story is to believed at all, "these people" muted themselves. Are we sure this isn't Pompey and they were covered by volcanic ash?
I wonder what researchers will find years in the future, when they excavate the remains of cities such as Detroit. I wonder what the remains will tell of the lives of people today.
It’s not PC to study immigrants today. It’s only PC to study immigrants from a hundred years ago.
Many apartments with big-screen televisions and just about nothing else in them.
Have you seen the “Ruins of Detroit” photo collections? They’re astounding.
If you'd seen areas like Howard Beach in NYC then you might be more believing.
******Dating to the 1850’s******** ?????????????????
Good grief - there should be diaries and photos.
Digging???
I’m all in favor of sunken civs - but this hardly qualifies.
My great grandfather’s obituary (born 1840 in Kilkee, Ireland; died Osceola in PA in 1895) noted that he was honored in his community for teaching other young, Irish immigrant coal miners to read and write. Although he was retired from the mines because of lung problems at the time of his death, he was noted for “reading extensively and discussing the news of the day with his neighbors and all who stopped by.”
It’s almost like FreeRepublic.
He made sure that his 13 children were all educated, although he didn’t live to see them all grow up.
As opposed to swinging by McDonald's on their way home?
You're right; this reads like a report on an ancient civilization rather than one that posters on this board have 2nd- if not 1st-hand knowledge. While this Brighton guy sounds like a typical academic--he has no experience in the real world of real people living real lives--I'm grateful that he's sifting under outhouses . . . and not me.
OH MY WORD!!! They actually used CERAMIC PLATES for dinner! OH! The huge manatee!!!
have they found bambi’s irish roots? maybe he can use this to claim he is an american citizen.
My family (Irish catholics) immigrated from Ireland and settled in Maryland during the 1840’s. They worked on the railroad and the MD canal. They all assimilated just fine. Frankly this “study” is a bunch of BS.
The article says most Irish immigrants assimilated. This group isolated itself.
Ethnic enclaves are nothing new in the US. All ethnic groups.
Maybe the author expected them to use paper plates.
My grandmother emigrated from Co. Clare in 1918. The rest of my ancestors, presumably all Irish, are still a bit of a mystery.
The good professor would no doubt be amazed at the concept of a potluck dinner.
But, no, poor immigrant Irish didn’t participate in dinner “parties” because they lacked serving plates.
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