BY ANDREA TORTORA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
RICHWOOD, Ky. - Written documents confirm that runaway Boone County slave Margaret Garner lived at the old Archibald Gaines farm. The land is proving that two buildings on the property are so old Ms. Garner likely worked within their walls.
Artifacts sifted from the earth of the Maplewood farm and the buildings' design date the structures to about 1840, archaeologists said Wednesday. That's a date that coincides with Ms. Garner's servitude.
More than a week of digging also turned up the foundations of the main house and has raised hope that the location of the old slave quarters will be found.
"We're really not going to find things from Margaret," Jay Stottman, staff archaeologist with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, said Wednesday. "But what we do find will help us understand the context of where and how she lived."
Nearly 150 years after Ms. Garner fled for freedom and crossed the frozen Ohio River into the free city of Cincinnati, the land she left is revealing history in bits and pieces:
A penny dated 1845. A piece of window glass. A broken plate with the English coat of arms on the back. Old nails. Arrowheads.
Archaeologists and students from Kentucky State University and Georgetown College started digging holes and sifting dirt last week, prompted by the farm's connection to the runaway Boone County slave made famous in Toni Morrison's 1987 novel, Beloved, and in a movie starring Oprah Winfrey.
The Garner family escaped to freedom 143 years ago. When slave catchers found them, the 23-year-old Ms. Garner killed her 3-year-old daughter rather than see her returned to slavery.
Ms. Garner was tried for murder, convicted and returned to slavery in Kentucky. Later shipped to Mississippi, she died of typhoid fever in 1858.
Now, as archaeologists sift away layers of earth, the lives of Maplewood's past occupants are becoming clearer. Piece by piece, their history is traveling from the 19th century to the 20th.
"This is not just black history. This is not just about slavery," Anne Butler, director of Kentucky State University's Center of Excellence for the Study of Kentucky African Americans, said. "This goes to the very heart of American history. It is an American story about freedom. About those enduring questions that come up time and time again."
Dr. Butler said Ms. Garner's story is drawing people to a site that holds answers to understanding how a county dealt with slavery. In the mid-1800s, Mr. Gaines was one of 438 slave owners in Boone County.
"This is a topic most would rather keep in the closet," Dr. Butler said. "My hope is that this work will lead to a dialogue about slavery."
That conversation is starting.
The work being done at Maplewood has not happened often in Kentucky. It wouldn't be happening now if Joanne Caputo, a Yellow Springs, Ohio, freelance writer working on a manuscript of the Garner case, did not push to resurrect Ms. Garner.
She determined, through written records, oral history and the help of a woman descended from neighbors, that Maplewood was Ms. Garner's home and that most of her life was spent as a house slave. Her documentation led the state and KSU to fund this study of Maplewood's land and two 19th century buildings still there.
Normally, such structures would be forgotten, said William Macintire, survey coordinator with the Kentucky Heritage Council. One clapboard building dates between the 1840s and 1870s. The changes in its usage - from residence to kitchen, to laundry to tobacco barn - tell part of the story.
The foundation of the Gaines' main house will fill in other blanks. By the week's end, researchers hope to find the location of the slave house.
"Blacks and whites working together. This honors Margaret," Ms. Caputo said. "This is like when you take a black and white photograph and colorize it. It brings things to our modern reality."
