Reclaiming the Lost City

After Maryland’s capital moved to Annapolis in 1695, St. Mary’s City ceased to exist as a city. Local people scavenged bricks and wood from its decaying buildings, farmers plowed the land where it once stood, and most written records that might have preserved its appearance were lost. With no known surviving old maps or drawings and only tantalizing clues in historical documents, archaeology became essential to verifying what had once been there. Archaeologists at Historic St. Mary’s City investigated the plowed fields by collecting and mapping bricks, ceramics, tobacco pipes, and other artifacts, confirming the locations of a number of buildings and former roads. Excavation revealed fence-line trenches, foundations, postholes, and pits filled with objects used and discarded in daily life, while thousands of fragmentary artifacts helped reclaim the lost world of St. Mary’s City. Careful control of each object’s exact location has been essential, and the distribution of handmade colonial nails over part of the site identified the location of Cordea’s Hope in the town center. Surviving records also provided valuable clues: a 1672 lease, the only detailed description of the Lawyer’s Lodging property to survive, helped archaeologists identify three key buildings in the town center.

Maryland · United States