After several surprise finds, the arduous work of attempting to uncover remains of two 1700s Fort Richmond structures along the banks of the Kennebec River has proved worthwhile.

Leith Smith, who has been directing the excavation project since its start in April, was excited by the finds. Among the artifacts found was evidence that American Revolution Loyalist Rev. Jacob Bailey may have lived at the site after July of 1760, near the time of the fort’s decommissioning.

“Just before quitting (last month), we found a deposit of artifacts,” Smith said.

Items found that day included ceramic artifacts, such as pieces of green Whieldon Ware, made between 1740 and 1770, old gravestones with the death motif of a winged cherub’s head, and a brass winged cherub head about three inches long, Smith said. 

Smith did some research on Bailey and even spoke with historian John Leamon, who authored a book about Bailey.

The Maine Historic Preservation Commission project's dig site is on Route 197 near the Richmond end of the Dresden-Richmond Bridge.

With the near future building of a new multi-million dollar Dresden-Richmond bridge, the early completion of the commission’s archeological dig became paramount this year. 

Once construction work begins for the bridge, the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) will be bulldozing the area on the north side of the site and requiring removal of the house currently owned by Paul and Jill Adams.

Unearthing the remains of the 18th century fortifications may help to recreate a picture of that historical period and better understand construction technology of that day. 

Fort Richmond actually served as a prototype for the future fortifications along the state’s rivers in the colonial period, according to Smith.   

The first Fort Richmond structure existed from 1724 to 1740. Colonists built it with earthworks, bricks and wood while the second structure went up in 1740 and then was decommissioned in 1755 before Bailey went on the scene. 

Inside that structure was a blockhouse and chapel that Bailey and Rev. William MacClenachan occupied after the decommissioning of the second fortification.  

Both forts preceded the founding of Pownalborough (part of what is now Dresden) and the Pownalborough Courthouse. The forts helped to established the colonial settlement and originally provide protection from potential French and Indian attack.

Much of the work at the site has entailed uncovering layers of soil and signs of the fort inch by inch of a mapped out grid of the area. “I’ve been working on this one little patch all day long,” Smith said on one of the work days. 

Approximately 60 workers have been doing painstaking work at the site. Some are full-time and part-time state researchers, some are retirees or volunteer workers from Dresden, Woolwich, and other communities around the state. 

They have been investigating the site on both sides of Route 197, just after the end of the Richmond side of the current Dresden-Richmond Bridge, which includes the park on the south side.

The investigation of the site has entailed three stages, according to Smith. The first stage involved site preparation, the second involved machine assisted sod and plow zone removal and the third consists of meticulous hand excavation.  

The Maine Department of Transportation provided untitled project funding in the amount of $359,000, according to Smith, which included pay for seven state employees, some of them temporary hires.  

Excavation and recreation work will start again next spring and the commission will need more funding to complete the project, Smith said. Then the commission’s project will entail washing, analyzing and cataloging finds. The catalog will include a database based on the order in which found.

Once completed, the project's results may well answer questions Maine historians have about the exact location of Fort Richmond between 1721 and 1740 and the reconstructed fort dating between 1740 and 1755. 

Questions have arisen because of statements Governor Belcher made to the Massachusetts General Court in 1740.

The governor said at that time the first fort was “so ruinous that there can be no saving of any part of the buildings without thereby weakening any repairs that may be made on them.” He also said, “I must observe to you that Richmond fort without any extraordinary expense may be so place as at once to command the southwest and northeast and west branches of the Kennebec River.”

From that statement, the Commission infers the pre-1740 structure was in poor condition and in need of either repairs, thought to be too expensive at the time, or removal and rebuilding, which the colony decided to do. 

Its structure would look much like Fort Weston in Augusta from the outside but with a different layout inside the palisades, Smith said.

Archeological investigations at Fort Weston (1754-1769) revealed the fort had an inner and outer palisade wall, which Smith and the project workers confirmed existed for the second Fort Richmond construction. 

Both Fort Weston and the second fort consisted of an alignment of log posts erected in a trench on the outside with gaps of 3-6 inches between the posts while the inside palisade, 30 feet from the outside palisade, consisted of posts with no gaps, according to Smith.

The time period the project has mainly focused on concerns the period when English settlers began returning to the lower Kennebec region at the beginning of the 1700s. The General Court in Boston sent a contingent of men to the region where the Pejepscot Proprietors constructed a building or garrison for them.

Besides the two fortifications and buildings associated with them, the project includes findings of trading post activity there and Native American habitation pre-dating the fort construction, as well as dwelling places in years after the forts existence into the late 1800s. 

It includes the occupation of the John Parks family at the fort site from 1775 to 1830 and a frame house Captain James Hathorne constructed on the stone cellar of the former Parks house in 1891.

Once the Historical Commission completes the project, it will disclose its findings to the professional archeological community and a published volume to the Federal Highway Administration and MDOT. Then the general public will receive information about the research findings on the commission’s website and Facebook page.

The commission has purposed to follow the National Park Service standards for the long-term storage of material and project records produced.