Heyward-Washington House Archaeology, Governor Francis Nicholson, and the Power of Social Media

Archaeology at the Heyward-Washington house in the 1970s, and again in 2002, produced an artifact assemblage unparalleled in size and diversity. The remarkable materials span nearly three centuries, and provide details on the many people who lived and worked on the property before, during, and after Thomas Heyward’s Jr. ownership of the house and grounds. One of the more unusual, and mysterious, artifacts is a bottle seal recovered during the 2002 excavations in the stable building.

Sealed wine bottles are often emblazoned with the name or initials of the owner, and were given as gifts to friends and business patrons. The Heyward privy yielded a dozen such seals marked for “G.A. Hall 1768,” the brother-in-law of Thomas Heyward Jr.  British scholar David Burton examined these, and other bottle seals from Charleston for his three-volume book, Antique Sealed  Bottles 1640-1900: And the Families that Owned Them (Antique Collector’s Club, London, 2014). Burton also studied the Museum’s seal from the stable excavations and pronounced it “most unusual” and “probably quite early.”

Unlike the typical seal, which bears the initials of the owner, this seal features an elaborate coat of arms.  The figure has a shield with a cross and four dots, surmounted by a figure holding a sword and a book. Archaeologists consulted in 2002 suggested the seal appears to be a family crest, but further identification was elusive.

Enter Syracuse University graduate student Sarah Platt.  Platt is using archaeological data from the Heyward-Washington House for her dissertation research. As part of her year-long studies here, she examines each artifact and enters it into a nationwide database called DAACS (Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, housed at Monticello).  As Platt examined our mystery seal, she became intrigued.  Like many young scholars, she turned to friends and colleagues on social media, first to share her enthusiasm for the rare find, and second to solicit help in a better identification. Below she describes the result:

“By a stroke of luck, I happened to post a photo of the seal on Instagram in 2017, celebrating the quality of a new camera lens while recording the seal for my own research. The seal caught the attention of a colleague, Christopher Pasch at Historic St. Mary’s City (now an archaeologist at James Madison’s Montpelier), the living history museum of the first settlement of Maryland. He and two fellow labmates were on the hunt; they recognized the figure perched on top of the shield as holding a sword and bible, and within the hour had located a description of the coat of arms for Francis Nicholson. A quick Google search uncovered an image of the seal posted by the College of Arms in England on Twitter. “

The Maryland lab archaeologists were evidently as intrigued as Platt, and subsequently found a complete image in a publication from 1884, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales: Comprising a Registry of Armorial Bearings from the Earliest to the Present Time by Sir Bernard Burke, also available online. Francis Nicholson served as provisional Royal Governor of Carolina from 1721 to 1725, as Carolina was transitioning from a proprietary to a royal colony and previously served as governor of Maryland.

Platt makes a critical point regarding archaeological science and the power of crowd-sourcing in a digital age. “You may not have the answer to a particular question. If Google fails you, you likely know someone (who knows someone, who knows someone, ad infinitum) who does. With the power of social media, we can access that ‘ad infinitum’ bit through the act of sharing posts, retweeting, and tagging friends. Archaeologists too rely on friends and colleagues to conduct and complete research.”

Thanks to her efforts, we are delighted to now have a firm identification for this mysterious artifact.  What we still don’t know is how and why Francis Nicholson’s seal ended up on the Church Street lot of gunsmith John Milner. We speculated that there must have been an occupation of the Church Street lot earlier than John Milner’s in 1730.  It is also possible that Governor Nicholson’s bottle remained in Charleston after he did.

– Martha Zierden, Curator of Historical Archaeology, The Charleston Museum and Sarah Platt, graduate student, Syracuse University.