Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1985 - 30

fact which we account for by assuming that the picture was taken directly into the sun. By doing so,
the photographer, in all likelihood, overexposed the
picture and obliterated the details of the roof in
the process. The lesson is clear enough, and constitutes an answer to the question often asked about
historical sites, "Why dig it when you can read
about it?" One answer might well be: "Because sometimes the documentary evidence is not only lacking, but wrong." If in investigating Quakertown we
had taken the early photographs as valid historical evidence, we would have missed the existence of
the large fireplace altogether. The shovel might,
in some instances, overrule the document.

This wellform was designed to handle efficiently the
abundance of data from the Quakertown wells. The information recorded is readily available for comparative
purposes or for transfer to computer-based data management systems.
hearth made from sandstone blocks smaller in size,
but otherwise similar to those used in the construction of the house. The fireplace was built diagonally into the corner of the room. It turned out
a bit later that this first fireplace shared a common
chimney with another one in a smaller adjacent
room, which proved to be the kitchen. This second
fireplace, however, was lined with brick rather than
sandstone, and had evidently been used for food
preparation.
The fireplaces in the Cadwallader House created
something of an archaeological puzzle, one illustrating the sometimes problematic relationship between documentary historical evidence and the
archaeological record. Visitors to the site provided
us with a continuous supply of anecdotes about
the Cadwallader House, among them the previously
mentioned Mr. Chutz, whose family was the last
to live in the house before it was abandoned and later
burned in ca. 1915. Both he and younger visitors,
who had clambered about the ruins of the house at
various times, all attested to a magnificent shoulderhigh carved sandstone mantelpiece above the large
fireplace on the east wall of a large room on the
ground floor.
Photographs of the Cadwallader ruins taken in
the 1950's clearly depict this fireplace with hunters
huddled in front of it. Yet two photographs which
were taken in the early 1900's fail to show any chimney on the eastern edge of the roof. Why? The
double chimney on the west edge of the roof is present in one photograph, but the east one is not, a
30

Archaeology

Other
complexities at Quakertown involved the
often interrupted old millrace that once constituted the backbone of the community. Running from
a stone milldam on Falling Spring Run to a fork
two-thirds of its length downstream, this race had
been hand-dug by the early inhabitants of the
settlement in order to harness water-power above the
falls. This race, located parallel to the ravine into
which the falls plunge, powered the several millsgrist, fulling, linseed, and tannery -located along
its course. At the fork, half of the water was diverted
farther down the hill, where it ultimately supplied
power to a grist mill; the other half shunted directly
to the ravine, where it must have created a magnificent secondary waterfall as it cascaded to its
parent streambed more than a hundred feet below.
Today the millrace is but a vague remnant of
the original. At various points it is interrupted and
obliterated by such intrusions as a modern highway, railroad bed, a sandstone quarry, and two transmission line right-of-ways. Even so, in addition
to indicating the sites of various cottage industries,
the millrace provides a handy means of establishing the chronology of major events at Quakertown.
What the race intrudes on or is interrupted by tells
us much about the settlement. Starting at the
crest of the hill, for example, we note that the race
is blocked by the railroad bed but that a small
culvert passes under the tracks: the railroad obviously comes later than the race, but at the time
of its construction the race still carried some water,
although nothing near to its original volume. The
race then continues on past the tracks for some
50 yards where it ends, now, abruptly in a deep, rectangular sandstone quarry that interrupted its
earlier course.
The race picks up again on the other side of
the quarry and after 20 feet, or 6.1 meters, passes
under a culvert adjacent to the site of Faldean's
General Store. Faldean's- which dates to about 1870
-was built after the race was abandoned but still
held water- the culvert tells us that- and before the
quarry was dug. Why? Because had the quarry
been in existence, no water would have passed along
the race, and hence Faldean would have no need
for a culvert. Carefully plotting the millrace as it
winds its broken way down the hillside has enabled
us to date a dozen structures relative to one another. Subsequent historical and archival research
has provided the absolute dates for some of these
features.

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1985

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1985