Heite, Edward F., and Cara Lee Blume

1994

A Community on McKee Road.

Prepared by Heite Consulting, Camden, Delaware. Delaware Department of Transportation Archaeology Series No. 109.

This report describes archaeological and historic research undertaken as part of the Scarborough Road project just north of Dover in Kent County. Earlier research along the same corridor was reported in DelDOT Archaeology Series No. 91, but adjustments to the plans made further work necessary. This report includes a detailed history of the project area and descriptions of work at four sites: the Ford Farm Prehistoric Site, the Scotten-Ford Agricultural Complex, the Nathan Williams Toft Site (a toft is a farm house and the surrounding yard), and the Mosley Community.

The Ford Farm Prehistoric Site was on the bank of the St. Jones River. Six 1x1-meter test units were dug on the site to depths of up to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet), and prehistoric artifacts were found at depths of up to 85 centimeters (2.8 feet). However, very few artifacts were found, most of them waste stone flakes.

The Scotten-Ford Agricultural Complex is a farm that includes a house built around 1890, a group of farm buildings close to the house, and a tractor-driven sawmill located in a wooded area away from the main farm. The authors found that the complex was a significant example of a twentieth-century farm, but most of it is outside the impact area of the new road.

The Nathan Williams Site was the location of a house shown on s in 1868 and 1881. A document dating to 1838 says that the house was "late in the tenure of Nathan Williams," a free black man. A Gradall was used to dig a shallow trench across the site parallel to the road. The trench was 5 feet wide and 250 feet long. No features were found, so the site boundaries were defined on the basis of artifacts and soil chemistry. Despite the lack of features, the authors believed that the site was still significant, because of its association with a free black family in the 1830s.

The Mosley Community includes three standing houses on the west side of McKee Road. Another house from this group now stands at the Delaware Agricultural Museum, and two others have been destroyed. These houses once formed a community of "Moors," or assimilated Native Americans, descendants of Lenape and Nanticoke Indians who lived in European style. The community had been established in 1884 by Jacob Mosley, who bought a 36-acre property and sold off parts of it to his relatives and other Moors. The community remained predominantly Native American for at least 75 years. (More information on the assimilated Native Americans of Delaware is provided in the same authors' report on the Bloomsbury Site, DelDOT Archaeology Series No. 154.)

Sawmill accessory building at the Scotten-Ford Agricultural Complex

Sketch of a "typical" house in the Mosley Community