Unearthing Ocala's past

Artifacts being discovered at work sites around City Hall

 By Susan Latham Carr
Staff writer
 The ground opened up in Ocala's downtown and Willet Boyer III stepped in, accompanied by a group of archaeology students and volunteers.

“This is the oldest part of the city of Ocala,” said Boyer, an archaeologist and adjunct professor at The College of Central Florida, as he shoveled dirt Thursday from the construction site in front of City Hall onto a screen being shaken by student Joe Snyder.

“This is the area originally platted in 1846 when the city was first built,” Boyer said.

Some of the artifacts being unearthed are from that period.

A few blocks west on Fort King Street, near Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church, another team of students and volunteers looking for clues to Ocala's past also was sifting through dirt from an open trench.

Boyer, who is curator at the Marion County Museum of History and Archaeology, had asked city officials if he could examine the dirt being overturned by workmen upgrading Fort King Street downtown. After receiving permission, he began surveying Fort King Street on Wednesday. The next day, he and his crew were shoveling and sifting through the soil to see what treasures might surface when he received a call from Larry Miller, a city engineer. Miller, who is overseeing the Citizen's Circle and “splash pad” construction in front of City Hall, had just found two aged, in-tact cork-necked bottles where a trench was dug.

Miller had met with Boyer on Wednesday and the archaeologist told the engineer to keep his eyes open when he was inspecting the property for anything that might be historic.

“I was scooping around and found them,” Miller said of the old bottles.

Boyer rushed from the Fort King site to City Hall on Thursday.

“These bottles here are mid-1800s,” he said proudly, showing off the bottles with a rainbow-colored patina finish. One of the bottles was lettered: “Co. St. Louis Rio Chemical.”

But it was what he saw next that really got Boyer's attention.

On the bottom north side of the 2-foot deep trench were a building foundation and the remains of a chimney.

“It's consistently nearly 32 feet long. There's less than 1-inch variance. That's exactly what you get with building floors,” Boyer said about the foundation.

David Cook, an Ocala historian, member of the museum board of directors and former editor of the Star-Banner, was at the City Hall site with Boyer. Cook said the area where the foundation was found is the area where Ocala's first courthouse, a wooden block structure, was located. That courthouse was taken down before the Civil War.

“It was a relatively small building, with an out-building that served as a jury room,” Cook said. “In most cases, courts met quarterly and sometimes twice a year, spring and fall times, so it was not very frequent.”

He said in the late 1880s, that block is where the home of Frank Harris, the founder of the Ocala Banner newspaper, stood, and the area where the current city utility drive through stands was a drug store.

“It may be Mr. Harris' home,” Boyer said about the foundation.

“This is more likely to be the courthouse because the bottles are mid-1800s,” he added. “Those bottles were found in context. That tells us the structure probably dates to the 1850s-60.”

Boyer said he has a plat map of the original downtown blocks, which were platted in 1846 by John Bruton, a surveyor, which describes the area as “a hilltop some distance west of Fort King.”

“This kind of urban archaeology is different from the normal field work we do, but its very important and exciting,” Boyer said. “This is particularly important because its an area that very little is known about and something that has never been investigated before.”

A treasure trove of artifacts were being uncovered with nearly every few shovels of earth Thursday, much of which would have been missed by all but a trained eye.

Because the trench had already been dug, Boyer and his assistants were spared hours of work, but they were diligently sifting through the piled soil in the hot sun.

In addition to the in-tact bottles, other pieces of bottles were found, as well as a full brick and a half brick, cut nails with square heads that date from the late 1800s, a whale bone button, a piece of graphite from a pencil, a rib bone and whiteware and pearlware ceramics.

“A lot of American settlers used whiteware,” Boyer said.

He said that because of Cook's research, he may be able to tie some of the artifacts to specific people.

Artifacts also were being found at the Fort King Street site, including an intact bottle with the inscription, “Sloan's N&B Liniment, Dr. E.S. Sloan VS Boston.” A vessel that appeared from its decoration to be a wine bottle was uncovered, along with horseshoes and rivets for bridles, and anthracite coal.

Cook said there were stables where the Marion Theatre sits today, which may explain some of the findings, and that two slaughterhouses were located in the area.

We are looking for what Ocala was before the great fire,” said Katherine Jakob, Boyer's photographer, about the 1883 fire that destroyed most of Ocala's history and all but the court records that had been moved for safekeeping because a new courthouse was being built.

Jakob was working with student Lori Vaughn and volunteer Larry Owen.

“To me it's interesting,” said Owen, who is retired. “To me learning is fun.”

Contact Susan Latham Carr at 352-867-4156 or susan.carr@starbanner.com.

 http://www.ocala.com/article/20120506/ARTICLES/120509785?p=1&tc=pg