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Foundry Relics Find Their Way Home to Cold Spring
Artifacts may be key to long buried historical past
by Maria Theodore Leiter
After fifteen years away from home, relics uncovered at the site of the former West Point Foundry have found their way back to Cold Spring. Their return could be the beginning of a new debate about the history of the Foundry and the nature of those who once lived and worked in its hay-day.
"We are quite excited these items are back where they belong," said Cold Spring Mayor Anthony Phillips on Monday. "We have been in talks and negotiations for well over ten years and finally, with the help of County Executive Bondi, who talked with the Orange County Executive and Historical Society, we were able to negotiate a sum of money to give to the Orange County Historical Society to make it happen."
Over the last two weeks, 180 cartons containing thousands of artifacts have been trucked by County vehicles from Orange County to the Highway Department garage, where they will be stored in a room specially built above the garage three years ago to meet temperature and humidity requirements for housing antiquities. That room was built by a partnership between the Village and the County. The Orange County Historical Society received $25,000 as reimbursement of expenses they incurred in housing the items over the years. The Village and County each contributed $10,000 and Scenic Hudson contributed $5,000 for this purpose.
"We are thrilled that they have been brought back to Cold Spring and the Community," said Steve Rosenberg, Executive Director of The Scenic Hudson Land Trust, the owners of the West Point Foundry preserve and the relics. "Now that they are back, they will be a tremendous resource for those interested in the cultural history of the area." When Scenic Hudson purchased the Foundry property in 1996 from the Old Foundry Corp, they also acquired title to the relics, which were unearthed in 1992 during a nickel-cadmium clean-up of the Marathon Battery Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency, and subsequently housed in Orange County through an agreement with the former owners. That site made the Superfund list after contamination took place in more recent history when, from the 1950s through the 1970s, it was home to the Marathon Battery plant. The EPA, in an effort to preserve the history of the foundry site while it concentrated on the clean up, hired archaeologist Joel Grossman of Grossman Associates of New York City to assure that anything of historical significance would be preserved.
According to Pat Martin, the archeologist from Michigan Technological University who is leading the current ongoing archaeological investigation of the site, the earlier excavation concentrated on two main areas. One was along a ridge that overlooked the old Foundry site that was excavated in order to build the Haul Road, which was constructed to bring the EPA’s heavy equipment down to the site. Items were recovered from the area that would become the road bed. The bulk of these were domestic objects - shards of pottery and plates, old coins, children’s toys, tools and household implements.
A second excavation took place near the marsh as a result of what was revealed by geophysical surveys. This dig uncovered 5,000 Civil War artifacts, including what turned out to be a cannon testing platform. Grossman, in a published article, discussed the significance of this platform, which he believes was used to test the gun that helped the Union Army win the Civil War:
"On the eve of the Civil War, the Union was in danger of being outgunned by the superior artillery of the French and British, both potential allies of the South. The ‘proofing’ platform, as it turns out, was being used to test a 30,000-pound rifled cannon capable of bombarding cities from a distance of five miles with almost pinpoint precision. Each shell could carry 300 pounds of a new and deadly chemical dubbed ‘St. Elmo’s Fire.’ Today we call it napalm.
The consequences of the testing program were profound. The chemical - being developed in a classified project for the eyes of President Lincoln only, directly under his supervision-was to be used for the saturation-shelling of southern cities. Although later accounts suggest otherwise, the long-range gun - in concert with other batteries of rifled cannon - ultimately burned a third of Charleston to the ground."
The Parrott gun’s innovation as the first U.S. produced rifling cannon with precision accuracy is well noted in the historical record. Robert Parker Parrott, a West Point graduate and Captain in the Army, who resigned his commission in 1836 to take over as the Superintendent of the West Point Foundry, is credited with designing the weapon. However, Grossman suggests his findings lend credence to stories of an espionage plot between President Abraham Lincoln and the Russians, who are said to have brought to the Foundry secret plans of a similar weapon being developed by the British.
Grossman also claimed that the domestic items found may suggest that those living in and around the Foundry were not the poor Irish and English immigrant workers long considered to have lived in the foundry housing projects:
"The over 145,000 Civil War artifacts we excavated suggested the presence of skilled workers from England, France, Germany, and Austria, countries then developing heavy weapons. Microscopes, gauges, thermometers, calipers, carbon arcs, and many other scientific implements were found. Domestic items, as well, paint a less-than-compelling picture of poor laborers: elegant ceramic goblets and tableware from France, England, and Hungary; gentlemen’s smoking pipes from Paris and Glasgow (notably a Tyrolean pipe from the Austrian Alps); an assortment of musical instruments; a broad range of toys including miniature doll house figurines; many late 18th and early 19th century European coins, including several specimens of Spanish Imperial Reales minted in Mexico; and much, much more.
"Finally, consistent with the kinds of R&D activities associated with heavy ordnance, each of the house excavations unearthed fuses, primers, and cannon calibration and cleaning tools as well as unidentifiable electronic instruments including batteries and what seemed to be early capacitors. Hardly the repertoire of poor immigrant laborers."
Martin told the PCN&R that despite this analysis by Grossman, there still remain questions about the identity of these workers that he hopes will ultimately be answered. He said that while Grossman’s theory is plausible, it is not based on a full analysis of the artifacts. Martin has not yet seen the contents of the boxes.
"We’ve really only begun to dig," he said. The main location of the Foundry has yet to be excavated.
But, that process will likely take years. Currently, the archaeological program is focused on training Michigan Tech students in archaeological methods. They are concentrating presently on another worker’s housing area.
This weekend on May 28 and May 29, the archaeologists will give a free tour of the excavation site between the hours of 10 am and 3 pm. For more information on these tours, see the accompanying article on the front page of this week’s PCN&R.
Housed in the village, the artifacts will now be accessible to scholars and members of the Historical Society. They will eventually be available for viewing, a few pieces at a time, at the Foundry School Museum in Cold Spring.
Mayor Phillips said that he has seen some of the contents and while nothing strikes him as breathtaking, all of the items are a part of the history of the village. He said they would probably be more interesting to experts and historians than to lay people.
Phillips said that his long-range plan is to eventually house the artifacts at the Loretto Rest property, which is currently in the planning stages of renovation. This will also take years.
For now, Cold Spring can be said to be on the opening leg a long journey of self discovery.
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