By Frank D. Roylance , frank.roylance@baltsun.com|June 17, 2009
Parts of Charles County's Zekiah Swamp are every bit as inhospitable as the name suggests, choked with tick-infested woods and boot-sucking wetlands.
But as archaeologists are discovering to their delight, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries Zekiah was a growth center for the young Maryland colony.
The site of a 1674 courthouse was found last summer. Excavations this month have uncovered what might be traces of the "summer house" that Gov. Charles Calvert built to dodge his political enemies. And diggers are searching for traces of Zekiah Fort, built in 1680 to resettle several hundred "friendly" Piscataway Indians.
FOR THE RECORD
An article about an archaeological project in Charles County in Wednesday's editions included an error in a reference to the period. The artifacts discovered date from the late-17th and early-18th centuries.
The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.
"Zekiah is just the coolest place," said St. Mary's College anthropologist Julia A. King, who is leading the multiyear archaeological survey, the first ever for the area. "The more I get to know it, the more exciting it becomes."
The digs are a cooperative project of St. Mary's College of Maryland, the College of Southern Maryland and the Smallwood Foundation.
Smallwood President Michael Sullivan, a developer with a passion for Charles County history, has provided almost $40,000 for the work "to preserve the history of this county and to help create a better sense of pride" for the fast-growing area, he said.
Compared with St. Mary's County, site of Maryland's first Colonial capital, and Anne Arundel County, which funds an active archaeology office, Charles County has seen little professional archaeology.
"There is a lot of history that's not been told," Sullivan said, "and a lot of sites yet to be discovered."
Zekiah Swamp lies at the head of the Wicomico River, a tributary of the Potomac. It extends northward for 20 miles, flanked by the fertile bottomlands that attracted Colonial tobacco planters.
In 1674, the government ordered a proper courthouse built at Moore's Lodge in the Zekiah to accommodate the county's growing legal needs. The spot served as Charles County's first county seat until 1727, when local government moved to Port Tobacco.
A Colonial map included a sketch of the courthouse, so "everybody knew exactly what it looked like," King said. "But nobody knew where it was."
By last summer, research in the rich county archives, clever computer mapping and 712 systematically dug "shovel tests" across hay and soybean fields had revealed compelling concentrations of late 17th- and early 18th-century artifacts. King declared that she had found the courthouse site.
