Glebe House Museum Receives $5,000 Grant For Archeology Project

WOODBURY — The Board of Directors of the Seabury Society for the Preservation of the Glebe House has been awarded a $5,000 grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council for its project “Reinterpretation of the Glebe House through Archaeological Explorations.”

The money will help support the research of Stephen Bartkus, a candidate for a master’s degree at University of Massachusetts at Boston, in an archaeological survey of the grounds of Glebe House Museum. The survey will assist the Glebe House in presenting a more comprehensive picture of life at the Glebe House throughout its history, with a particular emphasis on the first half of the 19th Century, when a silversmith and metal worker named Gideon Botsford lived and worked at the house.

Stephen Bartkus has taught at the summer archaeology camp at the Glebe House Museum for two seasons, and developed an interest in using the Glebe House site as his thesis project after the first season. During the summer of 2003, he and Michael Gonzalez, who also taught the archaeology camp, led a number of middle and high school students through the process of excavating, mapping and documenting a series of small excavation units.

This was a preliminary step in identifying areas that are likely to reveal information about the lives of past residents at the Glebe House. These excavations build on work that was done by Yale University in the 1980s.

The Glebe House, built around 1750, was sold in 1771 to James Masters, then Woodbury’s wealthiest resident. He purchased the house and 13 acres for a “glebe,” or farm, for the newly settled priest of the local Episcopal parish, John Marshall. The Reverend Marshall lived there for 15 years with his wife, their nine children, and two or three slaves.

In 1786 the property was sold, and a metal smith named Gideon Botsford lived and worked on the property for the following 65 years.

The Yale excavations uncovered a great deal of material relating to the Botsford metal working; now the hope is to also find evidence of other activities on the property.

An upstairs chamber in the Glebe House Museum, redecorated by Botsford about 1800, will be refurbished to provide more information about the 19th Century history of the property, based on the information uncovered by both the Yale excavations and Mr Bartkus’ work.