AUGUSTA — Old Fort Western is poised to become a regional repository for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of artifacts from both Fort Richmond and Fort Halifax in Winslow, making it a center for the study of the Kennebec River region’s history.

The three forts are connected by more than the Kennebec River, officials noted, so it makes sense to keep the artifacts together at Fort Western, where they would be preserved and accessible to the public, something that may not be the case if the artifacts were to remain in the hands of the state. So far, nails, tobacco pipes, pieces of ceramic pottery, buttons and animal bones are among the items researchers are studying.

Linda Novak, director and curator of Old Fort Western, said Leith Smith, an archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission who worked on a large dig at the former Fort Richmond site, approached her to ask if Fort Western would be interested in providing a new home for the hundreds of Fort Richmond artifacts they dug up. Fort Western has offices in the adjacent Augusta City Center where it has climate-controlled storage space for artifacts.

“They were worried it’d be like ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,'” Novak said, referring to the 1981 action film in which the mysterious and coveted ark of the covenant ends up stored in a giant government warehouse alongside countless other wooden crates of unknown items. “That they’d be put on a shelf in a warehouse and nobody would ever see them again. And they wanted to find a good home for this stuff.”

In Augusta, some of the “glitzier” items will be kept in glassed display cases in the offices of Fort Western inside city center, where they would be accessible to researchers and the public by appointment when city center is open. Other, less-interesting items that aren’t likely to draw much interest will be put in deep storage. Novak said she hopes to win grant funding to create a traveling exhibit to display and share items from the forts at schools and other locations.

“We may have just stored them,” Smith said of what would have become of the artifacts had Fort Western not agreed to take them. “A nice thing about them being here is they’re really going to be more accessible to the public. That’s really important. That’s what it’s all about.”

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The Fort Richmond artifacts will be joined by a similarly large number of artifacts from Fort Halifax.

On March 9, the Winslow Town Council voted unanimously to transfer ownership of artifacts excavated from town property at Fort Halifax Park by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission between 1987 and 1995 to Old Fort Western, so they can be kept and curated there. The agreement between Winslow, Old Fort Western, and Maine Historic Preservation Commission gives the town the right of first refusal for the items if Old Fort Western can no longer house the collections.

Novak said the only cost to the city of Augusta will be space in the fort’s existing offices at city center for the additional artifacts.

Novak said Fort Halifax artifacts are being cataloged and added to his book about Fort Halifax by Lee Cranmer, a former state archaeologist who has worked extensively on digs at that fort. When he’s done, they’ll be coming to Augusta.

PART OF HISTORY

The three forts, as well as the former Fort Shirley in Dresden that was at the site of the Pownalborough Courthouse, were connected by a common goal: to defend the land claimed by the English along the Kennebec River valley from possible attack by the French and their Native American allies.

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Fort Western was built in 1754 with the main house original to the site making it America’s oldest surviving wooden fort, officials said. The rest of the fort, which includes palisades, block houses and other structures, is a reproduction.

It was built by the Kennebec Proprietors, a Boston-based company seeking to settle the area along the Kennebec. Were it not for Fort Halifax, which was built the same year, Novak said, Fort Western likely wouldn’t have been built.

Novak said Fort Western likely wouldn’t have been necessary if sloops and schooners full of supplies could have sailed all the way to Fort Halifax with help from the tide to counteract the river’s current. But they couldn’t because the head of tide is in Augusta. So supplies destined for Fort Halifax were brought to Fort Western, where they were loaded onto smaller bateaux to continue upriver some 17 miles against the current to Halifax.

“I can’t tell the story of Fort Western without telling the story of Fort Halifax,” Noval said. “The forts go together.”

From 1754 to 1767, Fort Western was garrisoned and guarded by the James Howard Company made up of Howard, his sons and 15 other men who were first stationed at Fort Richmond, which sat where the recently built Richmond-Dresden bridge now crosses the Kennebec.

That Fort Richmond was the second of two forts on the same site.

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The first was built in the 1720s, Smith said, the second, larger fort in the 1740s. The location of the earlier fort wasn’t confirmed to be the same site as the second until the dig wrapped up in 2013.

Fort Shirley was constructed in 1752 to promote English colonization of the lower Kennebec. Once Fort Richmond and Fort Shirley were settled and secured, according to Novak, Fort Western and Fort Halifax were built to begin settlement of the upper Kennebec.

Novak said Fort Shirley artifacts are owned by the Lincoln County Historical Association, which has not agreed to add them to the growing collection to be kept at Fort Western.

HANDS-ON ARTIFACTS

Workers at Old Fort Western are currently cleaning and sorting through artifacts collected from Fort Richmond, often working outside within the fort’s palisade walls at a table so they can clean artifacts when they are not busy giving tours of the fort to visitors. The fort receives funding from Maine Historic Preservation Commission for the work.

Sometimes visitors help out.

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“It’s a nice addition to the visitor experience. They don’t expect to see us doing actual archaeological work,” Julia Pierce, a historic interpreter at the fort, said recently while cleaning and sorting nails, bits of ceramic pottery, animal bones and other items from the Fort Richmond collection of recovered items. “It’s interesting for people to see items belonging to the Howard family (on display inside the fort’s main building), but it’s still behind a rope. Out here, if they want to pick up a piece of pottery and hold it in their hand, they can do that. They can even help clean them. That’s a very unique opportunity.”

Pierce said she gets most excited when she comes across more rare items, such as animal bones that indicate what fort residents were eating or more personal items like pieces of tobacco pipes.

“Holding something like a pipe, something so personal, that someone else held in their hands, is exciting — you wonder, ‘who else held this,'” Pierce said.

After being tagged and bagged, other artifacts in the collection were placed into 36 nearly chock-full commercial-paper-sized boxes.

The artifacts include a large amount of broken pottery pieces, some of which Novak is confident she’ll be able to piece back together into complete objects. There are also buttons, coins, fish scales, egg shells, ax heads, horse bits, and at least one cannonball and a broken section of a cannon that Smith said likely burst when it was fired.

“We still have boxes and boxes and boxes left to catalog,” Smith said. “There’s so much we haven’t even begun to analyze the artifacts.”

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @kedwardskj


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