In spite of searing heat, John Torkos, Dave Cheatman & Charlie Breeland marched into Walters Park in full regalia on Saturday. They had to pause several times for pictures with swarms of kids (and a few old-timers, too), as they marched to the fife and drum to the Phillipsburg Area Historical Society tent. There they posed for more pictures, responded to questions about their uniforms and experiences as re-enactors. This is the second year John Torkos has joined us.

John Torkos, Dave Cheatam, Charlie Breeland

Ed Saultz has again arranged for several musical groups to perform at the Roseberry House during the Olde Towne Festival (July 24-25). The music is traditional and the performers are professional. The sound just totally filled the house last year. Depending on the weather, we may have the concerts outside this year. Here’s the schedule:

July 24, 2010

11:30 AM to 2:30 PM
Colonial Fife and Drum  (Dave Cheatham, Charlie Breeland) duo in period costumes presenting at the house and marching around Walters Park

2:00 to 3:30 PM
Traditional ensemble performing Ireland’s traditional dance tunes and songs – Terry Hartzell, Uilleann Pipes, Flute, and Whistle, Megan Everett, Vocals, and Rick Weaver, Guitar and Vocals.

4:00 to 5:30 PM
The Crooked Road featuring Iris Nevins, harp and Gina Tlamsa, flute
performing the music of Turlough O’Carolan and more.

July 25, 2010

11:30 AM to 2:30 PM
Colonial Colonial Fife and Drum  (Dave Cheatham, Charlie Breeland) duo in period costumes presenting at the house and marching around Walters Park.

2:00 to 3:30 PM
Dave Reber, hammered dulcimer performing the traditional music of Appalachia and the Civil War era.

4:00 to 5:30 PM
Ted Fenstermacher, fiddle and Ed Saultz, guitar performing the traditional music of Appalachia and the Civil War era

July 24 & 25 are Ole Towne Festival days in Phillipsburg, and the Roseberry House will be open to all.  Our hours are 10 am to about 5 pm both Saturday and Sunday, and there is free parking (the Middle School parking lot), and a shuttlebus from the main festivities at Walters park to the Roseberry House, just about 3 blocks away.

We’ll have a full schedule of period music (more about that in a post next week) and re-enacters. We’ve learned a lot about the wall paintings and stenciling, and hope to have some artifacts on display.

The preliminary investigation is finished and now we’re just waiting for the lab analysis from the archaeologists and the paint and color specialists. No dramatic discoveries that will make any headlines, but an accretion of little things that ought to give us a better idea of  when the building was constructed, the walls plastered, and the painting and stencils applied. The wall paintings really are exceptional, and soon we’ll post a schematic from Autocad that will give everyone a good idea of what the parlors would have looked a couple hundred years ago. It’s been a pleasure being there with Chris Frey and Frank Welsh, listening to them explain something about the several layers of plaster, for example, or the profile of the nails pried from the lath and what that tells us about the age of the building. There’s years of scholarship behind those generalizations and inferences.  I’ll eventually post the complete reports here in the hope that a few people will be as interested as I am.

Documentation is an important part of every archaeological dig. Dan is in the trench (called a “unit”) and Andy is recording the depth at which the soil changed from one color and texture to another. Every bit of glass, pottery, nails, etc. is recorded by the  depth where it was found. Nothing very dramatic about this unit, but cumulatively all the little pieces may tell us something of the lifestyle of the people who lived here a hundred, or perhaps even 250 years ago.

Andy, Dan and Jim Lee will be digging underneath the floor in the kitchen next week (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday). All are invited to come and watch. And take a look at the unique wall painting and stenciling in the parlors.

Jim Lee of Hunter Research will begin the archaeological work at the site on April 26. He and another archaeologist expect to be there all week. The Hunter group will sample the builder’s trench, the “patio” area off the kitchen where we hope to find the privy, and the area underneath the kitchen floor. All are welcome to stop by, but don’t expect any dramatic finds. We hope to find a few things that date to the eighteenth century that tell us something of the lifestyle of the inhabitants. A lot of the work takes place in the lab following the dig, so we may not know anything new by the end of the week.  On the other hand, you never know.

an 8 inch portion of one column of daisies

Chris Frey spent the day in the two parlors at the Roseberry house on Wednesday. He uncovered several major areas and took samples. He determined that the paint is a distemper—a water-soluble type common in the colonial period, and that the paintings are covered with 5-7 layers of whitewash.

The background color of the wall is a medium gray—what photographers would classify as an 18% gray, which seems pretty dark. There are five colors used in the decoration—black, dark gray, light gray, buff, and red. We’ll know more about them when the lab analysis is completed in about a month.

There are several patterns repeated at various places—a pattern of crescent-shaped leaves and dots along the vertical edges of the walls and doors, two different horizontal patterns below the chair rails and above the baseboards, and alternating columns of daisy-like flowers and floral patterns. It appears there are stencils, free-hand painting and stamps—almost perfect circles of gray dots about 3/8 of an inch in diameter. Black is frequently used to produce a sort of trompe l’oeil effect with flower petals and sword-like leaves. The red pigment appears to be the top layer, and may come off very easily; there are areas we think were red at one time but only the barest traces remain.

There is a great deal more work and analysis to be done, even after all the chipping, peeling and lab analysis is complete. A cursory examination suggests three techniques were used—stenciling, free-hand painting, and stamping, but when we really enlarge the images we’ll get a better sense of the techniques and the order in which the various layers were applied.

Nether Chris nor I have the artistic background to make anything of these patterns. We examined photos from two books on early American Wall Painting and Stenciling, but gained no insight from them. We’re not claiming they are unique, but they are certainly not common. The Roseberry house  is a special place, but the wall paintings may turn out to be the defining characteristic, studied and cited by scholars of the decorative arts in the American colonial period.

Chris Frey of the Keystone Preservation group will begin to remove layers of paint from a small portion of the parlor wall on Wednesday, April 14. He’ll be there all day, and says it won’t bother him if people want to stop by to observe. He said he’ll probably know a little more in the afternoon, but major results won’t be known until samples of the paint are sent away for chemical analysis. Still, we should begin to see more of some of the areas with the old floral patterns.

daisies in the parlor

We’ve had visits from Jim Lee of Hunter Research (archaeologists) and Chris Frey of Keystone Preservation (the wall paints and mortar analysis) in the last week, in both cases looking ahead to the research work that is critical to dating and preserving the property. Actual work will have to await warmer weather, probably in late March. But we did map out the areas where the archaeologists will do some digging, and we identified several panels in the parlor where the task of removing the layers of paint atop the wall paintings will begin. Chris was amazed at the extent of the paintings, which he said were usually confined to a single room or two. We plan to invite scholars and students from universities with major preservation programs (Columbia, Drew, Penn) to visit us during some of Chris’ work, and hope that we can find a graduate student or two who might consider doing a thesis or dissertation on the paintings and their preservation. We are going to put the Roseberry house on the map!