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Dana Atkinson of Lock Haven volunteers his time digging for artifacts at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Dana Atkinson of Lock Haven volunteers his time digging for artifacts at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Cynda Sites of Cambridge Springs sifts through dirt while looking for artifacts at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday afternoon.

A display of photos taken at a past dig at the John Brown Tannery Site can be seen.

Cynda Sites of Cambridge Springs digs in a plot at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Sandy Porter points out different plots at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Dana Atkinson of Lock Haven volunteers his time digging for artifacts at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Dana Atkinson of Lock Haven volunteers his time digging for artifacts at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Cynda Sites of Cambridge Springs sifts through dirt while looking for artifacts at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday afternoon.

A display of photos taken at a past dig at the John Brown Tannery Site can be seen.

Cynda Sites of Cambridge Springs digs in a plot at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

Sandy Porter points out different plots at the John Brown Tannery Site in Guys Mills on Wednesday.

RICHMOND TOWNSHIP — Cynda Sites, a trowel in her right hand, was kneeling in a square of bare dirt one meter on each side and a bit less than a foot deep in a rural part of eastern Crawford County just after noon Wednesday.

The Cambridge Springs resident was precisely where she wanted to be, and with each bit of dirt her trowel removed, she was getting closer to the early 19th century.

“I love history,” Sites said, looking up from her work, “and it’s just neat to find pieces of history.”

A few square-meter plots away, Dana Atkinson’s love of history had lured him from Lock Haven to spend the week digging alongside Sites and others.

“This is the fun part — when you start seeing that,” said the kneeling Atkinson as he pointed his trowel to what appeared — to the untrained eye — to be run-of-the-mill dirt near some thick roots. But in fact, Atkinson explained, the dirt was beginning to reveal a slight change in color as light-colored soil gave way to darker dirt. “This is the feature we’re looking for.”

A few steps behind Atkinson stood the massive stone walls of the building that had brought him and Sites and a group of other history-oriented volunteers: the tannery built in 1825 and then operated for a decade by abolitionist John Brown.

Used by several other business and eventually converted into a residence, Brown’s 27-by-52-foot structure is today owned by the John Brown Heritage Association and attracts a steady trickle of visitors from around the country. They are drawn by the story of the revolutionary who organized abolitionist partisans in the fight to determine whether Kansas would be a free or slave state, led the raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry in an effort to spark a slave revolt, and who was eventually hanged for treason in 1859.

For the volunteers at the John Brown Tannery Site this week, most of them members of the French Creek Archaeological Society, the opportunity to conduct a dig is a chance to peer into history to see how Brown made a living at an early stage in his progress toward radical abolitionism.

The goal is to explore what members of the society believe was likely a reservoir outside the tannery and a French drain that allowed vats dug into the ground inside and outside the tannery building to be drained into a nearby swamp, according to Sandy Porter, who is leading the effort. Ground radar surveys have suggested the location of the drain and the reservoir, which was likely fed by a pond that still exists across the road from the tannery, near where Brown’s cabin was located. While the cabin and nearby barn were long ago destroyed, the graves of Dianth Brown, Brown’s first wife, an unnamed infant who died in childbirth and a 4-year-old son who also died during the family’s decade in New Richmond, can still be found up a rise just east of the tannery site.

For Porter, Brown’s legacy is compelling but also problematic.

“John Brown is a controversial character. Some people you’ll talk to, he’s a saint, and other people, he’s a devil,” Porter said during a break in the digging work Wednesday. “His feelings for the slaves and everything were right, but when you start killing people over your beliefs, that’s when you cross over the line.”

Pennsylvania’s connection to the events and one of the key figures that presaged the Civil War drew Atkinson to make the 175-mile trek from his home to spend the week here.

“I was curious about John Brown’s tannery and I heard they were digging here,” explained Atkinson, standing up for a moment from the small pad that cushioned his knees.

A few meters away, Bill Adams of Edinboro was sifting soil through a wire mesh sieve as he excavated a square near the location of the suspected French drain. Already he had found pieces of nails dating to the 1800s as well as shards of crockery and a redware plate. He had also found a sizable pile of common rocks, but that’s part of the labor-intensive process.

The best find so far this week has been a metal button consistent with a common style from Brown’s era, according to Porter.

The society’s last dig at the site turned up 19th-century eyeglasses, pieces of cowhide in one of the excavated vats, and even a broken chamberpot, Porter said.

“People always want to know — was it John Brown’s chamberpot?” he said with a laugh. “I don’t have a Polaroid of him, but it’s here. We can’t say he used it, but it’s here.”

Actually, the chamberpot, glasses, cowhide and numerous other objects recovered from the site are now in the Richmond Township Building, 30348 Route 408, where a display of Brown-related items is under construction.

The hope this week is that more items connected to the man Adams called “the spark that started the Civil War” can be found to add to the display.

“It’s like touching history,” Adams said of the “labor of love” each of the volunteers is investing in the process. “It’s a treasure hunt — and knowledge is the best treasure.”

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.

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