Abstract
This chapter analyzes a gendered landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, based on our excavation of a property once owned by a free African-American woman, Lydia Hamilton Smith, who was the housekeeper of Thaddeus Stevens, an abolitionist and leading congressman during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. Stevens and Smith were only the most famous residents of the property; in this chapter we examine this property as an example of a microcosmic landscape through which we interpret changes in the social and physical landscape of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, over time. Our focus is on an urban houselot, located at the corner of Queen and Vine Streets in Lancaster, known locally as Lot 134.
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- 1.
Lebkicker was apparently one of the Lancastrians to join the 1st Ohio Infantry; this unit was organized immediately upon Lincoln’s call for volunteers in April of 1861. The 1st Ohio was ordered to Washington, but mustered in at Lancaster on April 29, 1861. The unit, along with Private John B. Lebkicker, continued on to Washington, and was engaged at the First Battle of Bull Run. In August of 1861, the regiment disbanded at the end of the three-month term of service under which it had been organized (Union Army 1908:v. 2). According to the Veteran’s schedule of the 1890 federal census, in October of 1861 Lebkicker reenlisted as a sergeant in the 79th Pennsylvania Infantry. The 79th Pennsylvania saw action in Tennessee and Georgia; Lebkicker would likely have participated along with his unit in a long series of battles and skirmishes, including engagements at Chattanooga, Nashville, Chickamauga, and Murfreesboro in Tennessee. The regiment eventually joined the campaign against Atlanta, and marched with Sherman to Savannah, saw heavy action in the Carolinas, and made its way to Richmond and eventually back to Washington following the fall of the Confederacy (Union Army 1908:v. 1).
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LCDBX: Lancaster County Deed Book X, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our students and colleagues who have helped us with this project. First and foremost we extend our gratitude to Sherene Baugher and Suzanne Spencer-Wood for inviting us to participate in this volume, and we do appreciate the unending patience they extended to us through the preparation of this chapter. We would also like to acknowledge all of those students and colleagues from Lancaster and Kutztown who helped and supported the Women of Vine Street project, especially the members and staff of the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County and the students of both Franklin and Marshall College and Kutztown University who worked on this project, particularly Bethany Rottner who completed a senior honors thesis on the Lydia Hamilton Smith materials. Thanks also go to John Svatek of Kerning Pair Design for his preparation of Fig. 6.1. Some of the information contained within this chapter was previously presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology meetings in 2004 and at the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology meetings in 2007.
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Delle, J.A., Levine, M.A. (2010). Remembering the Women of Vine Street: Archaeology and Historic Preservation of an Urban Landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In: Baugher, S., Spencer-Wood, S. (eds) Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_6
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