revisiting the former site of the john kent russell house during its excavation

even with the historically important john kent russell house having been demolished last summer, i have revisited the vacant site time and again to freely explore and ultimately unearth any and all artifacts left behind by the numerous occupants that called this place "home" since the time the house was built in 1855.

several visits during the tail end of summer, fall and now winter, have led to the discovery and excavation of bucket upon bucket filled with bottles, pottery and/or china, coins, glassware, keys and a few hand-stitched leather shoes (both male and female). the majority of these finds were discovered in numerous shallow ash pits that were easily accessible when the concrete slab laid for the construction of a garage in 1926 was broken apart and hauled away.

nearly all of the artifacts recovered from ash pits date from the late 1880's to the turn of the century. these finds were, for the most part, disconcerting, since the ultimate goal was to discover a privy pit that contained artifacts reflecting the time period when the russell family occupied the house in the mid-1850's on through the 1860's.

in late october i was ecstatic when i finally discovered a circular-shaped, wood-lined privy pit located in the northwest corner of the lot, that likely was constructed shortly after the house was built, or perhaps soon after. although i unearthed several artifacts dating from the late 19th century to the early 1860's, i did not find anything from the previous decade. i suspect the privy was cleaned out time and again, until the early 1860's, when russell constructed a nearly identical wood-lined cesspool (more on this later) that was twice the size of the trash privy.

when the cesspool was excavated, i did not find any evidence of an outlet, although i cannot entirely rule that out, since by no means, was the removal of the wood liner thorough. i was lucky enough to have the excavator take the time to not only dig that site, but also remove portions for me to salvage and document (see pictures below).

the oversized circular-shaped pool or tank was discovered only a few feet from the largely intact limestone foundation that was likely built for the two-story wood frame dwelling completed in 1855. one would surmise that the purpose of this much larger tank or pit was used in conjunction with indoor plumbing introduced at a later point in time.

the smaller privy pit was exactly five feet in diameter and three inches thick, which was confirmed after the excavator manged to carefully extract the privy pit flooring under my supervision (i was lucky to have all the time in the world with that one). the circular-shaped, sunken wood floor and surrounding staves, consisted of thick, tongue and groove pine wood boards with "up and down" saw marks evident.

after the components were extracted from the site, i later painstakingly cleaned and reassembled the floor in the workshop for further analysis and documentation. riveted joint wrought iron hoops and nearly all of the notched staves were removed and are awaiting further preparation for stabilization and future study.

prior posts have touched upon the discovery and documentation of the smaller wood-lined privy, containing materials (e.g., images and observations) dating from the early 1860's to the 1880's, so i will avoid discussing that find in any detail. instead, this post is a written summation of my observations during four straight days of seeking out any other buried artifacts, privies, early plumbing systems, and so on, that i otherwise did not have access until full excavation of the lot was to begin.

field notes and observations during the four day timeline. 

when the excavator that brought the house down finally returned to a largely undisturbed site fraught with prolonged inactivity on an early saturday morning, i was there with tools, camera and my fingers crossed that additional artifacts or privies would be found.

as previously mentioned, within the first hour we managed to carefully extract the floor of the privy we had cleaned out last last year. staves and wrought iron banding were also removed, despite most of the upper portions of the staves being rotted away. from there, i instructed the operator to carefully dig along the property lines bounded by an alley and adjacent properties. unfortunately and rather surprisingly, very little was found, with the exception of a c. 1880's "blobtop" soda bottle and a few other fragments of little consequence here and there.

since the russell house was built in two stages, with the addition added sometime between 1863-1870, i decided to explore regions of the lot directly behind the foundation that supported the original two-story frame dwelling constructed in 1855. there was a spot that contained heavy slabs of concrete left behind from the demolition and thus could not be accessed until this time. when the rubble was removed i noticed a heavily sunken (not from the weight of the concrete slabs) and very soft region (after being probed) that excited me greatly. i marked the area off with bright orange spray paint and soon after, the excavator made its way over and began to dig.

my growing disappointment or discouragement from not finding anything worthwhile earlier, immediately transformed into uncontrollable excitement when the first signs of wood staves arranged in a circular formation appeared. as the backhoe continued to pull dirt away from the site, i was in utter disbelief over the sheer size of the privy. when all was said and done, the diameter was over twice the size of the trash privy.

unfortunately, the pit, which was built in nearly identical fashion to the smaller one, with interlocking wood staves, thin wrought iron hoops and a thick tongue and groove floor, yielded nothing but clay, mud and excrement. not a single artifact was discovered in this gargantuan wood-lined hole. interestingly, and unlike the smaller privy, this hole contained a combination of layered brick capped off with cut limestone arranged along the outer perimeter above the staves.

so after waiting several months, the highly anticipated excavation didn't yield a treasure trove of iron-pontiled soda bottles or other incredible artifacts from the antebellum period. i cannot honestly say that i wasn't disappointed. however, instead of being fixated on delightful scenarios or discoveries conjured up in my head leading up to the moment the dig actually began, i looked at what i could take away from this experience.

aside from my seemingly unending infatuation with bottle digging and/or discovering privy pits to the point where a book focusing on unearthing the artifacts left behind from our 19th century chicagoan counterparts, i could finally close the john kent russell chapter and gather all of the data, imagery and artifacts to put together an exhibit and possibly a booklet detailing this journey from the moment this house appeared on my radar, to walking away with the last artifact found on site before construction of another condo wipes away all traces of the rich history that resided on this site.

in addition, i now have in my possession, a complete mid-19th century circular-shaped wood privy pit floor and an intact system salvaged from the what was likely a septic "tank" that was added when indoor plumbing was first introduced into russell's house. if the wood-lined pit was indeed a cesspool tank, connected to interior sinks and toilets, than that explains why no artifacts were found among the assortment of mud, clay, and fecal matter. going forward, if daily trash was not burned, then at least some of it ended up in the smaller privy pit, that was last cleaned in the early 1860's, based on the artifacts discovered resting on the privy pit floor.

there are still many more puzzling questions about the timeline and construction, so until i revisit this after further research, i'm going to end here for now, and just accept this to be another investigative report set on the back burner until i can more formally attack it with the right tools to address the mounting questions i've had since day one.