Fort Morris Find of the Day: Colonial Period Coin

On Wednesday, Museum staff joined the hunt for Fort Morris in Shippensburg, PA.

Excavations have previously uncovered ceramics, musket balls and gun parts and flints dating to the Mid-Eighteenth Century. The first coin was found this week. It is copper half-penny in relatively poor condition. However, the left facing figure with a laurel wreath crown (King George II) on one side of the coin and the outline of Lady Columbia on the other side, indicate that it is probably a King George II half-penny. These coins were produced from 1727-1763, three years after the King’s death, yet the last printed date on coins themselves was frozen at 1754.

Fort Morris was one of many military posts commissioned during the French and Indian War to protect the British colonial western frontier. Historical documents tell us that Col. James Byrd directed the fort’s construction in 1755 and that it was maintained as a military post through 1764. It is possible that early settlers in the Shippensburg area squatted in the Fort’s interior buildings after this time.

But by the late 1800s, it is believed that all documented structural remnants of the original Fort—its fortifications consisting of a stockade wall with four corner bastions, its associated buildings, and water well—had been abandoned and removed. The land was farmed and eventually reclaimed as a residential plot by the growing borough. Subsequently, the exact location of the Fort became obscured and confused in local lore and history.

Stephen Warfel, former Senior Curator of The State Museum is conducting his second field season on the most likely of three locations speculated to be the original site of Fort Morris.

Last year, Warfel’s crew of local volunteers and Shippensburg University students tested this location with the permission and invaluable assistance of the landowner. They recovered numerous Fort Period artifacts and evidence of sub-surface features that could be portions of fortification or building trenches associated with the Fort.


This year, the crew is opening a large block excavation to further investigate these features. They hope that when larger areas are exposed, the outlines of these pits and trenches will match a historic drawing of Fort Morris found in the archives of the British Library. They also continue to collect associated artifacts that will either collaborate or disprove the use of this location as a French and Indian War Period military site. Until then, the hunt for Fort Morris continues…

For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .

Preservation of Byrd and Oscar Leibhart sites

The Byrd and Oscar Leibhart sites have finally been placed in hands that will ensure protection from residential development. These two sites represent some of the last major villages inhabited by the Susquehannock Indians.

The Byrd Leibhart site (36Yo170) has recently been purchased by York County and the Oscar Leibhart site (36Yo9) has been purchased by the Archaeological Conservancy. They were acquired using funds from York County, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Farm and Natural Lands Trust of York County and the Archaeological Conservancy.

The Susquehannocks were the major Native American tribe in the lower Susquehanna Valley at the time of European contact. They controlled the fur trade in the region until about 1670. At that time they occupied the Oscar Leibhart site in York County. They briefly left here for Maryland in 1674 and returned in 1675 to occupy the nearby Byrd Leibhart site.

Several earlier Susquehannock villages have been archaeologically tested and they document over 100 years of cultural change, as the Susquehannocks gradually became the dominant Indian tribe, trading with the Europeans. Their collapse came during the 1670s due to disease, conflicts with neighboring tribes and conflicts with the Europeans.

These sites are incredibly significant because they represent some of the final occupations of this once great economic power. They dramatically illustrate the rapid cultural changes that occurred as a result of European contact. In January the Byrd Leibhart Site joined the Oscar Leibhart Site in the National Register of Historic Places.

For more information on the Susquehannocks, visit our PA Archaeology site or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania. The best synthesis of the Susquehannocks can be found in Susquehanna's Indians by Barry C. Kent. This is published by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and it is available at the State Bookstore (http://www.pabookstore.com/) Information on the process of preserving sites can be found in the Fall issue of American Archaeology.