Port Warden Records and Pier Surveys were not used

Torben Jenk, Ken Milano & Rich Remer provided evidence for and wrote (3/10/2008):

The “Hills 1797 Map” includes the note “The Line from Vine Street Public Landing to Eyre’s Wharf was fixed by the Port Wardens, March 21st, 1796.” Eyre’s Wharf stood just below Maiden/Laurel Street, in the middle of the SugarHouse property. 

The Port Wardens records describe and show the nineteenth-century history of bulk heading and pier extension into the Delaware River. Port Warden records survive for the entire SugarHouse site including the internationally-acclaimed shipwright Samuel Bower, who was issued a license on May 4th, 1809 to build a wharf for his second shipyard (1809-1830), on the east side of Penn Street, 190 feet north of Maiden/Laurel Street. Others, like this detail view from a survey of 1884, confirms the various lots purchased by George Landell as early as 1831.

The oldest original map that Marble uses seems to be the the “1838 Roberts Map” which identifies nine sites along the river’s edge (Vaughan, Howell, Donaldson, Screw Dock, Garrison, P[ublic] Landing & Ferry, Ledge, Derringer and Lippincott) and three structures on the hard land (Hay Press and Bank and 168).

 Why wasn’t that information researched to tell the real history of the development of the SugarHouse site?

“Throughout 2007 and the completion of field archaeology on Dec. 21, it appears that no seventeenth- or eighteenth-century primary source historic material was used — no manuscripts, no deeds, no surveys, no lawsuits, no journals — why?…” — Jenk, Milano & Remer (March 10, 2008)

“Thousands of relevant original documents survive in various local historical collections including the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Streets Department, Survey Offices, Deed Office and City Archives. Skilled researchers know how to find the relevant documents in those repositories and they know whom to contact when they get stuck. Because of this poor initial research, Marble missed areas of high historic interest and archaeological potential, including the ancient river front and development of the piers shown in the Port Warden Records which Marble never consulted.” 

Deeds would have been most helpful because: “The acts, and in some cases the declarations of a surveyor when executing a warrant, are evidence; but after a survey has been executed and returned, neither his acts nor declarations can affect the right of the owner” (Opinion by Judge J. Huston, Ball and Others against Slack and Others, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District, PA, 2 Whart. 508; 1837 Pa. LEXIS 206 (April 29, 1837, Decided).

Eighteenth-century deeds are particularly descriptive as to dimensions, structures, contents and neighboring lots. Like pieces of a puzzle, the information and shape of one lot helps to place the adjacent lots. Names of grantors, grantees and executors gives a broader picture of the lives of the community. Partnerships are revealed, deaths are recorded, activities are described, properties are seized. These are legal documents and likely the most accurate.

Careful research would have revealed that both Laurel/Maiden Street and Penn Street were “cut through by Jury in 1775” (Deed Book 1, p. 321, in Common Pleas Old Road Record Book P70 Vol 2 and affitdavit 9/15/1883).

The term “cut through” shows there was hard land and that Penn Street was not built atop filled land in the Delaware River. The Phase IB/II Report (p. 52) only refers to Penn Street in 1845: “a petition, purporting to be signed by a majority of property holders on Penn street from Maiden to Shackamaxon street, and Shackamaxon street from Penn to Beach street, requesting the same to be pitched, curbed and paved.”

Yet again, Marble & Co. rely on mid- to late-nineteenth-century information, thereby ignoring and dismissing the rich archaeological potential of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

“The 250 Native Indian artifacts already found on the SugarHouse site make this the largest concentration of Indian artifacts ever retrieved by professional archaeologists in Philadelphia.” — Jenk, Milano & Remer (March 10, 2008)

This find should not be confused with other nearby Native Indian archaeological sites for: 

“ethnohistory often makes it clear that different clusters of individuals sharing the same culture may not operate their cultures in the same ways. Simply put, no two archaeological sites are identical. Often we believe that these differences may be due to temporal separation or environmental (ecological) adjustments to circumstances in the immediate neighborhood. Less often do archaeologists consider the possibility that the variations seen are the result of normative differences that can appear within a culture as the result of different kin groups and/or residential groups interpreting their supposedly similar culture in different ways. These cognitive differences may become more evident when we examine the range of variation among the various populations of a culture. Let us, then, examine historic data from the Middle and Lower Delaware River Valley, an area that until recently was considered inhabited by a single culture—the Lenape. This Lenape culture would be expected to produce archaeological sites roughly comparable from place to place within their realm. Yet it would also include the kinds of variation expected to occur within any constellation of related sites.” — Marshall J. Becker, “Cultural Diversity in the Lower Delaware River Valley, 1550-1750: An Enthnohistorical Perspective,” published in Late Woodland Cultures of the Middle Atlantic Region, ed. Jay Custer, University of Delaware Press, 1986), p. 91.