Archaeologists in Virginia unearth colonial-era garden with clues about its enslaved gardeners

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Archaeologists in Virginia are discovering one of the most lavish displays of wealth from colonial America: an ornamental garden where a wealthy politician and enslaved gardeners grew exotic plants from around the world.

Such plots of land were found throughout the British colonies and served as status symbols for the elite, the 18th century equivalent of buying a Lamborghini.

The Williamsburg garden belonged to John Custis IV, a tobacco planter who served in the colonial Virginia legislature. He is perhaps best known as the first father-in-law of Martha Washington, who married future U.S. President George Washington after Custis’ son Daniel died.

Historians are also fascinated by the elder Custis’s botanical adventures, which are well documented in letters and later books. And yet this dig is as much about the people who farmed the land as it is about Custis.

“The garden may have been Custis’ vision, but he was not the one doing the work,” said Jack Gary, executive director of archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that now owns the property. “Everything we see in the ground that relates to the garden is the work of enslaved gardeners, many of whom must have been very skilled.”

Archaeologists have dug up 3-foot (1 meter) thick fence posts hewn from red cedar. Gravel paths have been uncovered, including a large central walkway. Stains in the ground show where plants once grew in rows.

The dig also yielded a pierced coin that was commonly carried by young African Americans as a good luck charm. Another find is the shards of a clay chamber pot, which was a portable toilet probably used by enslaved people.

Animals appear to have been deliberately buried under some fence posts. These included two chickens whose heads had been removed, and a single cow leg. A snake without a skull was found in a shallow hole that had probably contained a plant.

“We have to ask ourselves, are we seeing traditions that are not European,” Gary said. “Are they West African traditions? We have to do more research. But it’s features like this that keep us trying to understand the enslaved people who were in this room.”

The museum tells the story of Virginia’s colonial capital through interpreters and restored buildings on 300 acres (120 hectares), including parts of the original city. Founded in 1926, the museum did not start out telling the story stories about black Americans until 1979even though more than half of the 2,000 people who lived there were black, the majority were slaves.

In recent years the museum has increased efforts to tell a more complete story while trying to attract more black visitors. It plans to be one of the the oldest black churches in the country and restores what is believed to be the oldest building in the country remaining school building for black children.

There are also plans to recreate Custis’ Williamsburg home and garden, then known as Custis Square. Unlike some historic gardens, the restoration will be done without the benefit of surviving maps or diagrams, relying instead on what Gary described as the most detailed landscape archaeological effort in the museum’s history.

The garden disappeared after Custis’ death in 1749. However, excavations have revealed that the garden was about two-thirds the size of a football field. Descriptions from the time mention statues of Greek gods and tree trunks pruned into balls and pyramids.

The garden’s legacy lives on through Custis’ correspondence with British botanist Peter Collinson, who traded plants with other horticulturists around the world. From 1734 to 1746, Custis and Collinson exchanged seeds and letters on merchant ships crossing the Atlantic.

The men may have introduced new plants to their respective communities, said Eve Otmar, Colonial Williamsburg’s master of historical horticulture. For example, Custis is said to have made one of Williamsburg’s first written records of growing tomatoes, then known as “apples of love” and native to Mexico and Central and South America.

Custis’s gardeners also planted strawberries, pistachios, and almonds, along with 100 other imported plants. His letters don’t always reveal which ones thrived in Virginia’s climate. A recent pollen analysis of the soil indicates that drupes such as peaches and cherries were present in the past, which was not a great surprise.

The garden existed at a time when European empires and slavery were still expanding. Botanical gardens were often used to discover new cash crops that could enrich the colonial powers.

But Custis’s garden was primarily intended to display his own wealth. A study of the area’s topography placed his garden in direct view of Williamsburg’s only church building at the time. Everyone would have seen the garden’s gate, but few were invited inside.

Custis surprised his guests with, among other things, the imperial crown lily, which originally comes from the Middle East and parts of Asia and has clusters of hanging, bell-shaped flowers.

“In the 18th century, these were unusual things,” Otmar said. “Only certain classes of people got to experience that. A rich person today — he buys a Lamborghini.”

The museum is still trying to learn more about the people who worked in the garden.

Crystal Castleberry, Colonial Williamsburg’s public archaeologist, has met descendants of the more than 200 people enslaved by the Custis family on its various plantations. But there is too little information in the surviving records to determine whether an ancestor lived and worked at Custis Square.

Two individuals, Cornelia and Beck, were listed as property of the Williamsburg estate after Daniel Custis died in 1757. But their names only raise more questions about who they were and what happened to them.

“Are they related?” Castleberry asked. “Are they afraid of being separated or sold? Or are they reunited with loved ones on other properties?”