Crew assembles for first day of dig.
In June a dig team launched a search for site where Civil War general Josiah Gorgas and his family lived during an ill fated effort (1866-1870) by the former chief of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau to reopen the Bibb Naval Works. During the war, the ironworks had supplied pig iron used to cast the famed Brooke guns and cannon prized by southern artillerymen.
The field crew was comprised of an archaeology field school from the University of Alabama Birmingham and Alabama Museum of Natural History’s Summer Field Expedition.
The team
quickly learned that the 19th century house had been built atop a site that had been popular among prehistoric peoples from several cultural periods including the middle and late Archaic, early Woodland and Mississippian. For these early visitors, the site had served as a short term camp site.
The site is on top of a knoll overlooking Mahan Creek. At the base of the knoll, a large spring of clear, fresh water flows year round. Prehistoric visitors returned regularly for thousands of years. They built shallow stone hearths all over the site.
Remnants of multiple shallow stone hearths.
A large double fireplace discovered early in the dig became the key we needed define the foot print of the Gorgas home.
The base of a double fireplace.
House corner.
Time ran out before we could determine the full dimensions of the substantial structure but we did succeed in locating several brick support piers and one house corner.
The Gorgas home is an important part of the Brierfield Ironworks Historical State Park because of the historically significant people who lived here. Josiah Gorgas had achieved prominence in the Confederate military because of his role as Chief of the Confederate Ordinance Bureau. His wife, Amelia Gayle, the daughter of an Alabama governor, went on after her husband’s death to serve as Director of the Library, named in her honor, at the University of Alabama. Son John Crawford Gorgas developed the program of mosquito control that eliminated yellow fever and made possible the completion of the Panama Canal. In later years, as US Surgeon General, John Crawford would revisit Brierfield telling his hosts that his childhood days there had been among the best of his life.
