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Mid January 1998
"We have to be close to bottom," I said hopefully to
Mike. The only alternative, if we were going to dig what was now
nicknamed "The Hole From Hell," was to rent a pump. The
same place that rented back hoes had pumps. The big question was,
would it be powerful enough to pump water straight up from twenty
feet down? The answer turned out to be yes, but it took forever.
The hose would kink and need to be held by hand. The two inch
diameter hose, when full of water and hanging over the edge of
the hole, weighed more than one person could hold. Everything and
everyone got wet. It was not just the unpleasantness of the cold
weather, but the water was clearly polluted. More than once we
questioned our sanity, but greed and the drive to know what was
in the bottom of this 1830’s privy lured us as a siren calls
sailors to be dashed upon the rocks.
March, 1811
Newport had some months earlier been selected as a recruiting
station for Kentucky and Ohio. Washington clearly anticipated
war. Recruits were arriving daily and townspeople pointed in awe
to the near mile long encampment along the Ohio River. Tecumseh
was traveling to tribes all over the West inciting them to
violence towards the every growing white community. The Fourth
Infantry, garrisoned at Newport, participated in the Battle at
Tippecanoe, the battle that presaged an Indian uprising if and
when Great Britain and the United States went to war.
Residents received a second shock on December, 6, 1811. Houses began shaking from what was probably the most violent earthquake ever to strike the United States. It was centered in New Madrid, Missouri and was estimated to measure 8.0 on the Richter scale. The force temporarily changed the direction of the flow of the Mississippi and was felt as far away as Boston. While Newport suffered little permanent damage, chimneys were shaken and doors swung open.
February 1998
"It’s your turn Tom," I cajoled as I climbed out
steaming from perspiration and covered with mud into the cold
winter air. Slipping out of the hip waders I took off my
saturated gloves and watched Tom prepare to take his turn. I sat
on a bucket next to the hole and watched him disappear into the
depths. He climbed down the twenty feet of chain ladder and then
onto an aluminum ladder that rested on a shelf of muddy dirt four
feet off the bottom. Mike dropped the tape measure into the hole,
"thirty feet, he announced." Digging was depressing.
Water flowed in as fast as you could dig it out. The mucky fill
had artifacts but precious few whole items. At this point we were
below river level.
October 1814
Since the War of 1812 had ended, Newport’s status as a
frontier town changed to one of greater refinement. The citizens
replaced their log courthouse with a brick structure forty feet
square and two stories tall topped by a wooden cupola capped with
a steeple. Log dwellings disappeared in favor or frame and brick
homes. Military cutbacks brought a recession that slowed
population growth. Before the war in 1810 there had been a 290%
increase from the 1800 census to 413 people. Now after the war in
1820 there had been only a 46% increase to 604 persons.
February 1998
At thirty-four feet we hit bottom. It had taken seven men seven
days to dig this monster out and besides consuming us and our
energy it produced few intact items. The hole was too old and
contained mostly puffs and black glass along with a few shards of
a beaded edge flask. At the thirty foot level we had dug out
about half of the remaining fill before deciding to call it
quits. Ted had opened another hole with the back hoe less than
ten feet away. The hole was stone lined and not too deep only 12
feet. We found mostly 1870’s and 1880’s bottles
including numerous sodas and a "Warner’s Safe
Cure".
February 1840
The founding generation of Virginians, including General James
Taylor, had shaped the character of Newport in the virtue of the
Southern tradition. The community, of 168 dwellings and 1,149
people had now been settled for two generations and attained a
level of social sophistication appropriate for a small southern
river community. Newport’s elite young men were trained to
conduct themselves as outgoing, yet self composed adults capable
of taking command and acting decisively. On the other hand the
young women were to demonstrate grace, dignity and cultivation
with a hint of a quiet sense of strength.
Several years earlier textile and fabric manufacture had begun to dominate the first phase of Newport’s industrialization. There was a silk factory to weave handkerchiefs and other delicate luxuries, a cotton factory and a woolen factory both of which had extensive machinery, power looms and machine shops as well as a hemp mill all steam operated.
February 1998
It was quite a sight -- as clouds of dust rose from the
demolition of the five story apartment building. The giant track
hoe bit and gouged at the walls until one by one the floors
collapsed upon themselves in a jumbled pile of brick and wood. To
the East stood a soon-to-be-abandoned car dealership that would
shortly meet the same fate. Then we would move back across the
street to find the privies long covered by cement.
Meanwhile, we continued our back hoe search for privies around the monster hole. We located five or six wood line holes, one of which dated to the 1850s and produced a dozen or so bottles. Two of the lots east of the substation had been dug years earlier by local diggers. To the West three businesses slated for demolition still operated. Now nearly bare, the entire area had at some earlier time been covered with housing. Only three vacant houses stood nestled tightly between the flood wall and the businesses like ghosts from a time long past. We had dug at least fifteen privies with the promise of much more to come.
February 21, 1849
The 1840’s had given rise to a prosperous community with
many elite citizens and a broad middle class, despite its lagging
economically behind its immediate neighbors of Covington,
Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. The citizenry was overwhelmingly
American-born Protestants descended from colonial stock that had
fought in the Revolution. The state Legislature had noticed the
rapid growth and promoted the community to the rank of city by
statute. The population had exploded. The 1850 census showed a
growth of 413%. The face of Newport was changing. Now only 22% of
the residents were native southerners and just 12% Kentucky born.
Newport had become an immigrant city of German, Irish, English,
Welsh, Scottish and Italian.
February 1998
Behind the three abandoned houses we easily located six
outhouses, one of which was under an addition so would have to
wait until the houses were torn down. Again the holes were not
too deep, averaging 10-12 feet, but they had water in them
slowing the pace. The oldest hole for the middle house produced a
number of good medicines including a Shaker Sarsaparilla and some
squat soda bottles several marked "Henry Wenzel".
Further digging on this side of the street would have to wait
until the businesses closed and demolition begun. The digging
continued in the South west quadrant just west of where we first
started digging. A large building on the corner had been removed
and the area had been bulldozed flat. Using the maps we located
more digging sites.
April 1860
The flock of immigrants to Newport brought with it negative
economic consequences. Higher paying jobs shifted downward as the
proportion of laborers doubled. Of the more than 1,100 families
living in the city, more than 60% rented rather than owned their
homes. The flood of immigrants had health consequences as well.
High population density together with a primitive system of waste
disposal and a general ignorance of sanitary hygiene lead to
annual death rates twice as high as the rest of modern America.
Children were the greatest victim with half of all burials in
Newport being for children under ten.
The 1860’s were marked by rapid industrial growth. Lumber production increased the manufacture of products such as cigar boxes, wooden moldings and other interior woodwork specialties. An iron works made fancy railings that graced many Newport front yards. Rolling mills and blast furnaces to produced cast iron pipe and other casings.. Manufacturing capital multiplied sixfold. There were cigar makers, sewing machine assembly shops. Two bottling works producing mineral water were opened one by Henry Wenzel the other by Joseph Eichelberger.
BELOW ARE SOME OF THE EARLY BOTTLES FOUND
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