JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Archaeologists digging next to the Kennedy Bridge in downtown Jeffersonville uncovered two portions of limestone foundations that date to the late 1700s or early 1800s, including one on a lot where former Indiana Territory Gov. Thomas Posey, who also was Kentucky’s third lieutenant governor, once lived.
But the archaeology project team re-buried the historical foundation portions under what will be part of the downtown crossing of the Ohio River Bridges Project - to the dismay of Clark County Museum director Jeanne Burke.
Burke was hoping to have gotten a stone or two for the museum, which she said would have been a chance to bring Posey’s story from history books to real life.
“If you have something tangible, then you have stories and an exhibit,” Burke told The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., (https://cjky.it/1eBbNd0 ).
Still, Burke is pleased that other artifacts found as part of the bridge work - including pieces of undecorated and slipped creamware pottery, blue transfer-printed pearlware fragments, numerous pottery pieces showing early decorative motifs and other fragments - may later find their way to her museum.
State law requires that such artifacts be initially taken to the Indiana State Museum, where archaeology workers will analyze them, identify their significance and relate them to historical eras, according to officials with the state and the bridge consultants.
Mitch Zoll, director of the state historic preservation office, said that once the state’s final reports are done, the state Department of Transportation could negotiate with the local museum to acquire the items.
“I think it’s a viable alternative,” said Zoll, who explained that the limestone foundations were reburied in place because they are too heavy to dig up and move.
The archaeological work is part of the efforts by bridges project officials to comply with federal historic preservation guidelines set forth under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.
Uncovering history The Indiana Department of Transportation recently released the archaeology reports for both the west and east sides of Fort Street in Jeffersonville - between Riverside Drive and the floodwall - following open-records requests from The Courier-Journal.
The reports were done by McCullough Archaeological Services, of Indianapolis at the request of Walsh Construction, which is building the downtown crossing of the Ohio River Bridges Project.
Of the foundations, one report said: “Governor Posey’s mansion once stood on this lot and, given its large size and the early-nineteenth-century materials recovered, this foundation may be associated with that structure.”
Other early 19th century ceramics and hand-blown glass were found near one section of foundation, which extended westward to a curb and parking lot under the existing Interstate 65 bridge.
Cisterns, privies and trash pits on the sites also yielded artifacts from the last three centuries, including a French gunflint, another gunflint made of Wyandotte chert, mortar fragments, a cast iron kettle leg and more pottery pieces.
McCullough teams completed the digs late last year. The interim reports filed last month show photos and diagrams of exact locations where the items were found, part of the federally required mitigation of historical resources for bridges project.
In 2012, archaeologists for the bridges project also dug near Market Street and Ohio Avenue in Jeffersonville, where they unearthed foundations, cellars, trash pits and drains associated with the Indiana’s first state prison. It operated there from 1822 until inmates were moved to a new prison in Clarksville in 1847, a complex that later was converted into a Colgate-Palmolive plant.
Like the original prison site, the Fort Street site was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to its age; however, no one has nominated either site.
Other factors considered in nominations for the registry include the historical significance and integrity of the site, which was diminished when the original structures were replaced by more modern houses.
Fort Street is located within the 203-acre Old Jeffersonville Historic District listed on the registry in 1987, noted for its 19th and 20th century architecture. Many houses and other older structures within the district were demolished during the 1960s when Interstate 65 was first built and others have been demolished since it was listed.
Late 19th and early 20th century houses on Fort Street and Riverside Drive that were located in the path of the new downtown bridge were either relocated for historic preservation or razed last summer.
And Indiana state preservation officials last month deemed the third archaeological investigation adequate, meaning downtown bridge construction can proceed along both sides of Fort Street.
This week, Walsh Construction workers began driving the first H-shaped piles deep into the ground on the west side of Fort Street, as they have in several other areas along the planned bridge route between Kentucky and Southern Indiana.
Plans call for workers to begin setting steel beams on the Indiana approach leading to the downtown crossing this summer, which will force the periodic closing of both Riverside Drive and West Market Street at different times.
Jeffersonville’s foundation Jeffersonville’s first settlement was located about 40 feet below the southern tip of present-day Fort Street.
Dubbed Fort Finney for Maj. Walter Finney, it was established in 1786 during the Northwest Indian Wars by the U.S. War Department, according the interim archaeological report.
A year after it was founded, the fort was renamed Fort Von Steuben for Baron Friedrick Von Steuben, who like Posey, was a Continental Army officer during the American Revolution.
The fort “was a strategic military point. It was on a peninsula so you could see up and down the river quite a ways,” Burke said.
The archaeological reports heavily cited the work of Lewis Baird, who in 1909 wrote “Baird’s History of Clark County, Indiana.”
“During the few years of Fort Steuben’s existence as a garrisoned fort, the little village around it was the scene of more than one military display,” Baird wrote.
“By the 1830s and 1840s, there were children in Jeff who played in the ruins of the fort,” Burke said, citing old photos and other documents at the local library branch.
Remains of the fort have never been found. The peninsula on which the fort sat was washed away, erosion from flooding and swift Ohio River currents that Burke said still are problematic on the Indiana side.
In 1802, Indiana Territorial Gov. William Henry Harrison named Jeffersonville the county seat, but it temporarily lost this designation to neighboring Charlestown in 1812.
“Despite this loss, the town was given fresh importance in 1813 when newly appointed territorial governor Thomas Posey made his home in Jeffersonville rather than in Corydon, by then the capital of Indiana Territory. Posey communicated with the legislature by messenger and was initially censured for the expense and inconvenience this arrangement caused,” McCullough Archaeological Services wrote in its report, citing Baird.
Virginia native Thomas Posey initially moved to Henderson County, Ky. He was elected to the Kentucky state senate in 1804 and became the speaker.
Posey later moved to Indiana, serving as the Indiana Territory’s governor from March 1813 until November 1816. Indiana became a state in December 1816, but Posey lost its first gubernatorial election to Jonathan Jennings, who is buried in Charlestown.
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Information from: The Courier-Journal, https://www.courier-journal.com
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