Welcome!

The genesis of the Society’s fall 2010 exhibit of artifacts from the Hancock-Clarke House dig has an interesting twist to it. A couple of years ago Elaine Doran, the Society’s Collections Manager, and I realized that we did not know the whereabouts of the many boxes of artifacts collected during the 1960s dig at the Hancock-Clarke House. This was obviously a big problem! Thanks to some excellent detective work by Elaine, they were located in the cellar of the Town’s visitors center where they had been stored for decades. We were delighted to recover them.

The next step was to have the Fiske Center for Archaeology at U Mass Boston inventory the artifacts and put them in better boxes. Christa Beranek was the leader of this effort for U Mass. We admire Christa’s professional approach, and enjoyed working with her and two of her master’s degree students who ended up doing their theses on the collection.

The date range for the artifacts is 1690-1740 and for the most part pre-date the existing house which was built in 1737. This means that the artifacts were used by the Reverend John Hancock, Lexington’s minister for 50 years and the grandfather of the famous Patriot. The artifacts include every day items like chamber pots and milk pans, items used for entertaining such as wine bottles and fancy dishes, and decorative items for personal adornment like buttons and jewelry.

On October 16, we will open an exhibit of these artifacts at Buckman Tavern. We would like to locate people who were involved in the 1960s dig to share their memories with us on this blog, and hope that they will also come to see the exhibit.

Elaine Doran is working with Christa on the exhibit and currently has a team of volunteers doing mending of the artifacts that will be on display.