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Upon This Land: History, Mystery, & Monuments

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For many visitors, George Washington Birthplace National Monument is a surprisingly complex historic site. It is a place where people come to remember George Washington, but also find a story of how the past can be lost, reshaped, or rediscovered. Historical documents and archeological resources that contain critical information about the lives of all who inhabited this land are only beginning to be understood. Join us as we explore the history, mysteries, and monuments of the park.

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Season 2

Season 2 Trailer

Introduction

Transcript

Welcome to the second season of our podcast, where we bring the history, mysteries, and monuments of George Washington Birthplace National Monument to the world. At first glance, one might assume we have a straightforward story to tell: George Washington, one of the most recognizable figures in the world, was born here. What more needs to be said? However, many visitors find that George Washington Birthplace National Monument is a surprisingly complex historic site. Many of the people, including members of the Washington family, who lived at Pope's Creek are underrepresented in the documentary record. This means that the site's resources have the potential to significantly enhance our understanding of the world Washington came from and the people who inhabited it. In the rural landscape of Virginia's Northern Neck, the National Park Service preserves not only archaeological resources that contain critical information about the origins of the Washington story but monuments that stand as a testament to how we, the people, have remembered—and will continue to remember—the global significance of the Washington legacy. In the first season of the podcast, we explored the power of place; however, when only remnants of the buildings and material culture from the Colonial Era remain here, the power of this place truly comes from the people who keep its relevance alive by examining the historical documents and archaeological resources that hold essential information about the lives of all who inhabited this land. As the nation prepares to commemorate the semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, the stories we share at sites like ours are essential for providing an authentic reflection of our nation’s 250-year history. This year in our podcast series, we will bring you stories of the people—past and present—who have lived and worked on this land. From those who struggled to define their place in the greater Atlantic World to individuals who have endeavored to memorialize this land as the birthplace of George Washington, we will highlight voices from our local communities and from the scholars and researchers who share a common interest in unlocking the mysteries of the park. This season, we explore “We The People” in relation to this land, its history, its mysteries, and its monuments.

Welcome to our second season of Upon This Land: History, Mystery, and Monuments! Intro music courtesy of Wolf Patrol. Outro music courtesy of Brumbaugh Family.

Episode 1

The Clothes We Wore - Part 1

Transcript

Dustin Baker George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born. Only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present, and future of this place. Brick by brick. On this podcast series Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments. Thank you for joining us on this episode. This year, we're celebrating George Washington's 293rd birthday, and we're focusing on the theme We the People, and something that's really unique to all people, no matter where you live or what time you lived. Our clothing items, we all wear them. It's something truly unique to human beings, and we have someone on the show today that knows a lot about this subject.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Hi, my name is Sarah Rivers Cofield and I am the curator of Federal Collections at the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, which I know is a really long name, so we just call it the Mack Lab for short. And we are the primary archeological repository for collections excavated, as required by law in Maryland when various laws kick in. And one of my specialties is the study of clothing related artifacts. And I also have a historic costume collection at home. So this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. However, as an archeologist, I'm not. I'm not actually a costume historian because that would require having a lot of textiles to work with, which I don't, although I do know them, and I've read a lot of their books, so, so yeah, I'm here to talk about what I know about clothing for you guys.

Dustin Baker Well, thank you so much for being here with us. And we always want to connect our visitors and our listeners to the, stories and the people who are part of the Washington origin story. And the Washington family lived here for seven generations, from roughly 1660 to 1780. And I just want to start off by asking, how did clothing or fashion evolve during that time?

Sarah Rivers Cofield Well, first of all, I'm really glad, that those are the bracket dates 1660 and 1780, because the 1660s and 70s was a really transitional time in costume, and so was the end of the 18th century. Whereas in between those time periods, for about 100 years, things were relatively stable. So I don't have to give you this whole evolution of clothing, you know, especially it's such a visual thing. So to do it in a conversation is a little challenging. But basically around 1660, is sort of this transitional time in England as, as most listeners probably have heard of, there had been something going on in England. The English Civil War, the first half of the 17th century was very tumultuous over there. There was a lot of fighting between, the Roundheads and the Cavaliers are sort of these personalities that people picture, and they had particular clothing styles that went with them, and there was a lot of, sort of political and moral fighting about conspicuous consumption and wearing fancy clothes versus being more modest and not showing off your wealth all the time in your clothing. And so in the 1660s is the restoration of Charles the Second and the monarchy. And they're coming in trying to sort of, they're trying to bridge that gap. They're trying to show, yes, I am aristocracy, I am wealthy, but I also can be modest. So that people don't have to overthrow my government again, and be insulted by it. And so Charles the second is really trying to set an example. And one of the things he does in this time period, in that decade is introduce the vest, which seems like not the first thing you would think of for this time period. But it really started a trend of the three piece suit for men that persists to this day. And at that time period, it was, your breeches, which sort of ended at the knee, waistcoat or what now we call a vest and, coat over that. So that's sort of the three piece suit and that has persisted. Women, at the time were wearing in the 1660s, usually sort of a bodice and a skirt or petticoat. And then they sort of transitioned to something called a mantua or gown, which is it went on like a robe. It opens in the front, and is sort of fitted to the body with a draping technique. And that is the style that really persists from the end of the 17th century, almost all the way through to the end of the 18th century for women. So men are wearing this three piece suit cross weeks and breaches, and women are wearing, a man to a gown. And under that, men, their undergarments are, men were wearing stockings. That's what covered up from their feet up to their knees, because they're wearing those knee breaches. Women wore stockings as well. And then the other men's undergarments, were a shirt. Just a shirt. They might have had drawers for certain occasions, different times. But for the most part, men were really long shirts that went down past the waist. And then they sort of tuck it in that bulky area around the waist and all of the, you know, all the private areas. And so that is the undergarment, and similarly for women, they were a shift which, later became known as a chemise, which is that's what would touch the skin. And it's very much like the man's shirt, but not quite as bulky, not quite as long sleeves, depending on the gown that they're wearing. And that's what they wore underneath everything. And then both of them would have garters to hold their stockings up. They would, you know, both men and women wear shoes. Obviously. And then they had various accessories depending on the garment. So. So you have women, stockings and shift covered by a gown and petticoat. And then another thing to mention, I think for women throughout this whole time period, a petticoat wasn't it was a, it was like what we think of as a skirt today. It was meant to be seen, and they're often very decorative. It wasn't considered an undergarment like it ended up later in the 19th century. And then you have men wearing stockings, shirt, waistcoat, reaches coat, and then, of course, headwear. All the accessories, all of those things. And, and that is really sort of the foundation of the wardrobe throughout this whole time period. There's, there's changes in the cut, the number of buttons, the popular trims and things like that. But but those are the basic things that sort of persist throughout that time.

Dustin Baker So this is kind of the classic what you picture in your mind when you think of people in the Revolutionary War era.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yes. Oh, the, the war era, you're getting very close to this end of the 18th century transition when things change very dramatically. But but yeah, it's sort of, you know, when you picture George Washington, he's got the branches on, he's got the waistcoat, he's got the coat, you know, he's got the the hat, you know, the wigs. They didn't mention wigs, but wigs were obviously a thing during this time period. And really throughout that whole entire time period, though, the styles change. So yeah.

Dustin Baker Yeah. And you mentioned earlier about how clothing, both then and now is really wrapped up in our identities and, how did clothing differ depending on not just where you were, but also who you were in society?

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah. So it was very much, you know, there were a lot of people in this time period, especially in the 17th century. And I feel like I should put a plug in here. There's a really great book. If people want to read more about this. It's called the Three Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity. That's fantastic. I highly recommend it. I cannot remember the author, so I apologize for that. But, you know, there are people in the 17th century, through the 18th century that really believe strongly that it's a good thing to be able to look at a person and be able to tell what their role is in society that like, you know, nowadays we say, don't judge a book by its cover. But but there was really a lot of people saying, no, really. We need to be able to tell. We need to be able to judge you by what you're wearing. And to the point that they were laws passed, sumptuary laws and things like that, saying, you know, no, if you're not an aristocrat, you can't wear silk. If you are not knighted, you're not allowed to have gold spurs. You know, those are the kinds of things that people really cared about. So people wanted to be able to know by looking at you, what is your role? And so to an extent, some of that is related to your occupation. So you could usually be able to tell a sailor by what they're wearing because maybe they have slops instead of breaches, you know, something like that. But for most people, those foundation garments that I described as a three piece suit, the stockings, the gown, the petticoat, and I forgot to mention two stays, which are the women's, foundation garment that goes over the shift and under their gown to give them their shape. You know, everybody is wearing those same elements. What differs is depending on how wealthy you are, the quality of the fabric, whether or not it was made specifically for you. All of this clothing is handmade, so those who could afford it would get bespoke clothing made for them, but other people might buy it secondhand because clothing was very expensive and then alter it, to try to fit. So but the quality of the fabric, the, the fit, and how well it's kept up, you know, how many times has it been repaired? How many years out of style is it those are the kinds of things that would indicate to you how well off a person was. But one thing I think it's really important to think about this time period is that, yes, you can look at somebody and tell what their role is in society, but you can't always tell by how richly they're dressed, what their role is. So, I think the best example I can think of is, one of the trends throughout this time period, 17th century and 18th century, is to literally wear trims made of metal. So metallic thread like a silk thread, sort of wrapped in silver or metallic embroidery of various kinds, was very popular for the people who could afford it to decorate their outfits with lots of kind of embroidery or trim. And it would really sparkle in the candlelight. And it was very high maintenance. It was something that you had to have servants really, to help you take care of. So it was very much conspicuous consumption. You're literally wearing silver on your clothes. And so there's this tendency to think, oh, well, people who had that must have been the wealthy people. But one of the more popular applications for these metallic trims was livery for servants. So if you find that, say, in a slave quarter and the US, it's not actually necessarily that unusual, it might just be that that person is wearing a livery garment. So, that person's role is to wait on and to make their owner the person who literally has title to their body, look good, and reflect on them. And so you can't always necessarily say, oh, well, this is an expensive thing. Therefore it was worn by a wealthy person. Because that's not always necessarily the case. So yeah, you really could drill deep and look at somebody and say, I pretty much know who you are. And there's a really great quote by a traveler from the 1740s complaining that he was wearing his sort of old wool cap in a tavern, and he looked like, you know, a Carter. Like he was just, you know, driving the herd and not a very wealthy guy. And they gave him the scraps, when it was meal time. And he complained, and he was like, you know, well, I have I have really nice silver buckles at home and I have a linen hat. And so he switched out his will have for a linen hat, and he was like the other one was fine for Marilyns. But now that I'm in Pennsylvania, I have to wear this one. And, you know, it was very telling about how important each and every attribute of somebodys outfit might signal to somebody like, this is, this is who I am. Another myth, people have the impression, people in the past that if you're not wealthy, maybe you're not wearing all the garments all the time. You know, maybe you're like in a shirt and pants or something, or you didn't wear stays, for example, which was sort of like the the earlier equivalent of a corset. You know, and that really, I think is not as much of a thing as people think. So every time you watch a historic show on television nowadays, they sort of set apart the main characters or the wealthy characters from the other characters, and by having the other characters be almost in rags, or these like really dumpy clothes that don't fit right and they're always really dirty and it's just so overemphasized. And you know, what I think that people should be picturing is that people are essentially wearing the same thing. It's just that it's it's not as good a quality, but it's not necessarily in rags either. You know, people didn't know how to mend things. And, you know, if you think about stars as sort of the equivalent of a modern bra, you would never be like, oh, well, people who can't afford, you know, people who don't have any money, they don't wear bras. You know, you wouldn't say that, right? That doesn't really apply. Like you would still wear stays. They're probably just hand-me-downs days or they're falling apart stays or, you know, whatever. But you still would have that same basic sense of decency and what a real wardrobe is. So it's sort of a myth that I think TV perpetuates this. Everybody's in rags or they're not fully dressed. Oh, that wasn't really so much a thing,

Dustin Baker Yeah. I mean, that's I mean, still true today. Like, you can wear name brand or get a knockoff version. It's looks kind of the same, but.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Right. But you would never be like, oh, well, you can tell that that person's poor because they don't have a shirt, you know, like like they would. It's just usually like hand-me-downs and stuff. You know, there are certain levels of decency, I think, and, and now this isn't clothing related at all, but one of from your time period, especially one of the big myths is, well, I think if some I have a little bit of a pet peeve about it, but everybody talks about how, you know, if you're poor in that time period, you drink like ale and beer and you have to be wealthy to have wine or liquor. But like, just because something is priced higher doesn't necessarily mean that everybody adhered to exactly their means. Especially in a, in an economy so based on credit, so that it does apply to clothes to people might dress beyond their means and end up in debt. That was certainly a thing. In terms of fashion, you know, I all, for all of this knowledge I have of clothing, you know, if you dropped me in New York City and told me to, like, pick out who's wearing Manolo Blahnik or who was wearing Prada or whatever, I would have absolutely no idea whatsoever. Like, I know that those things exist, and I know that those kinds of distinctions are very noticeable amongst certain classes. Still to this day, just like they would have been in the 18th century. But, you know, I, I can recognize it better from 300 years ago than I could in our modern society, even though a lot of the rules still apply.

Jonathan Malriat So quick clarification questions. Just, because you mentioned a couple clothing terms that I know I am not as well versed in historic clothing, so I'm more interested even just learning a bit about them. So you mentioned sailor slops I think was the term.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yes.

Jonathan Malriat What are those? Those were in lieu of breaches?

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah. So they're basically pants. But instead of being super tight at the knee, they sort of open up like a, almost like a skirt. So it's almost like a divided skirt is what it looks like.

Jonathan Malriat What was the use for that? Why would they do that versus breaches?

Sarah Rivers Cofield I don't know for sure. Some of these things are just trends and there are a lot of details. You know, I mentioned I'm an archeologist coming into this as a hobbyist. I am not a costume historian, what archeologists know is how they were fastened. So, you know, the hardware that we find, and so in many ways, the cut of the garment, I don't have to know all of those details.

Jonathan Malriat So even on those idea of fasteners, what were some different types of fasteners that you would find as like an archeologist? What would you find that differentiates between the different types of clothing?

Sarah Rivers Cofield So, so as archeologists, what we find the vast majority of clothing is gone in the archeological record, unless you have a really good preservation environment that preserves fabric, which is very rare in our region. Most of what we find is the hardware. So, that means fasteners like buttons and buckles or accessories. So, like fan parts, jewelry, maybe watch parts, things like that. And a lot of people, you know, really want to be able to interpret clothing from these very few artifacts because, you know, it's very important to to think about what people were wearing because it was so central to their identity in this time period. And it's very hard when all you have are these little pieces, parts of what went there. So what we're given to work with for the most part, like I would say, what we have most of as buttons and throughout the late 17th and most of the 18th century, most buttons represent men because the waistcoat and the coat and the breeches all fastened with buttons, as a rule, but women's outfits, their gown that closed in the front, and maybe wood fastened over what's called a stomach or a triangular piece that would sort of go in between the front and maybe decorative of the woman's bodice. Oftentimes those garments might pin on with straight pins as opposed to like a button or a buckle or something. So most buttons tended to be for men. Women did wear them for riding attire if they if they had a writing habit and they sometimes had buttons as like just decorative accessories on their outfits. But the majority that we find as archeologists are from the menswear, and you can sort of tell by the size and time period which garment it's from. So earlier on, maybe like 1730s and before buttons tend to be pretty small. There is a lot of them on a suit, I think, one of James's suits. James the second, the one who was sort of pushed out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. One of his surviving suits has over 200 buttons on it. Just those three pieces of clothing, a suit, waistcoat in breeches, so sort of very tightly spaced buttons that are fairly small and somewhat bulbous in shape. And then as the 18th century goes on, the buttons sort of flatten out and they get a little bit bigger over time until by the 1780s, the buttons, especially for coats, could be huge, like over an inch in diameter. And they're much further spaced out. So we can sort of look at trends and buttons. But one of the things a lot of people think about with this time period in archeological collections as well, if I have a silver button that is a higher class than a brass button, which is higher class than a pewter button, and all of that is true. But throughout this time period, some of the most expensive buttons would have been covered in a matching fabric. Because textiles were very expensive and because fabric covered buttons wore out the fastest, it was almost more conspicuous consumption to be using buttons every day that were more likely to wear out faster and couldn't be reused. And so a lot of fabric covered buttons we don't find archeologically except for possibly if the, if the mold that it was built over was made of bone, we might find that, but a lot of them are made of wood, and so we don't find them. And so fabric covered and and embroider, embroidery covered buttons may have been some of the most expensive ones, and yet we don't find them. So we always have to think in terms of okay, yes, we found this and we can say this much about it, but we have to take into account how much we, we don't know, might my things that might have been there but didn't survive. And if you don't take that into account, you can go down the road of doing really incorrect interpretations. Some other hardware that we study a lot are buckles, because the 18th century was huge on buckles. So men wore buckles at the knee, to close the breaches nice and tight at the bottom of the knee. And, both men and women wore shoe buckles, to fasten their shoes. Women also, there was a big trend for, matching bracelets that sometimes fastened with buckles and, neckwear for men, often had a buckle at the back called a stock buckle. And I've seen references from this time period to shirt buckles, sleeve buckles, there's garter buckles for boot garters to hold your boots up. So we find a lot of those, and some of them, we can figure out what they are. Not all of them. I would say. Can we necessarily figure out what they are? Because we really need a lot of artwork and surviving examples to sort of tease that out. So, yeah. So buttons and buckles are big. Agates are another thing we find relating to costume, although that tends to be a little bit more popular in the 17th century. Agates being the little metal tubes at the end of laces to keep them from fraying. We find the tubes, but not the laces. So a lot of people, you know, did wear lace to garments of various kinds. And then, like I mentioned, we have jewelry. We, parasols and umbrellas, fans, all of the accessories, those tend to be the easiest to really identify when we find them.

Dustin Baker You know, when I think of even just the last century, of the kinds of clothing people wore and, how they wore it, its fashion and clothing just seemed like such an ephemeral topic. What makes it worth all the effort people put into studying and understanding what people used to wear?

Sarah Rivers Cofield Well, I think because it really does reflect their role in society. And sometimes we can even get at what people were feeling and thinking, you know, just like now, you know, we might express our identity and our opinions through a t shirt or a hat or whatever that says. And it might just be really explicit, like in words. And in this time period, the same thing was true. So, you know, think about, for example, during the American Revolution, I'm sure most people have heard about this desire to wear homespun. You know, we want to we want to end our dependance on on imports, and we're severing our ties to England. And so we're going to wear homespun garments that were made here. You could see that. You could see it by looking at what people are wearing. And so if you're out and about, somebody could look at you and tell whether you were a revolutionary or a Tory, you know, and think about like we talk about during the American Revolution, it's not just the British, it's the Redcoats. Like they they're literally identified by the coats that they're wearing. I realize that they're red. And so it's like Captain Obvious, but it's not, you know, it's not a coincidence. And that's how we think of them. Like it is their identity. It is like, this is who I am. It's so if we're trying to understand people there, this is one of the best ways to do that. As long as we have the evidence. I mean, obviously, if they wrote a diary, we should take their diaries word for it to get at their thoughts and feelings and whatnot. But honestly, the clothing is kind of the next best thing. In terms of how they represent themselves. And a really good example, archeologically is, one of my big projects at work is helping with our we have a diagnostic artifacts website and diagnostic artifacts in Maryland. And it's it's fairly outdated right now. We're working on an update. And one of the things that I have worked on adding is linked buttons. So a lot of people nowadays, when you think of a linked button, you see what I'm talking about is cuff links. Right. So they're two buttonholes being fastened with a linked button of some kind. Well, in the 18th century, everybody wore cufflinks, men and women and children. And that's because those garments that I mentioned earlier, the shirts and the shifts that touch the skin, would be laundered most often. And so for the sake of prolonging their life, it made a lot of sense to have all of the fasteners on them be removable for laundering purposes. So everybody wore cufflinks at the at the cuff. Not all shifts had cufflinks, buttons, but some did. And men also might have linked buttonholes at the neck that you often don't see in paintings because of the various neckwear and stocks that they're wearing. But anyway, so everybody's wearing these and we find them archeologically a lot because everybody was wearing them. And it includes the enslaved population. We find them in slave quarters, oftentimes we only find them in slave quarters. So I've been doing a lot of research on these, and it turns out that those who could afford to buy more precious metals did, because these are the smallest accessories. And at the time, the material set the price. Not so much the labor to make it. Because human labor at the time was just extremely cheap. So if you had a more elaborately made button like, say, it has a glass molded inset and that's assembled with foil to make it look beautiful, and then it's in a metal setting that's not more expensive than a gold sleeve button. That's plain looking. It's all about the material. So we find all of these buttons of all these different materials. And they often have these glass inserts that have inscriptions on them or molded lettering on them, and they literally might have political statements on them. So one of the ones we have says liberty on it, and it's very it's from Annapolis. It's very much like this is the Revolutionary War. And it's tiny. It's like it's a little oval that is long. This side is only a half an inch, so they're taking a lot of effort into putting little messages on these barely visible buttons that their, their sleeve ruffles would, most of the time obscure. You wouldn't even necessarily see it. The most obscure one we have is labeled Fips, and the label which there are these two guys, Phipps and a label who ran for Parliament in 1774, in the Newcastle region of the UK. And they lost. They lost like horribly. But they were supporters of the movement to sort of lay off the Americans a little bit and like, let's restore the economy and not like get this conflict going. They wanted to hold government accountable. Anyway, the their opponent had more than twice the votes of them. But it's really interesting that in Baltimore, Maryland, we have a little sleeve button that has those two guys names on it. You know, like what? How did that political button end up over here? You know, who over here is voting for Parliament and, so I really do think that the clothing is a way to get at individual belief systems, and not necessarily just how wealthy you are, although that is true. Or what is your role in society like, whether you're a sailor or you're an enslaved person? That is also true, but also, you know, what do they think about things? And I think that that is really exciting. As an archeologist.

Dustin Baker So why should people care about historic clothing?

Sarah Rivers Cofield it is a really fun topic. And it's especially fun to make sure that you sort of can envision everything, especially, you know, when you're an archeologist trying to picture how, you know what I mostly known as, just like the little metal things person. You know, I study all these little metal things, whether it's horse related or clothing related or you hardware, you know, any of that stuff. And if I didn't have in my head these sort of images floating around of what people were wearing and how they got dressed, thanks to all the costume historians out there, I wouldn't be able to answer any of those questions. And so, I'm always really appreciative, appreciative of the work that other people are doing, whether it's at Williamsburg, making the clothing, and the milliner's shop or, the mantle makers that are working there, or the people who are writing the books and, and sharing their museum collections online. You know, it really is an amazing field. Now that so many people are making their collections and images available online, it's getting much more accessible. And I think it's something that everybody can relate to.

Jonathan Malriat So changing topics a little bit. Going back to earlier, you mentioned that one of your projects is working on a diagnostic artifacts website, Can you tell us what the role of the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory or the MAC lab is?

Sarah Rivers Cofield so the Mac lab is a repository for artifacts. And so most of the time when archeology is done in our country, it's either done like in a museum setting or a historic site setting, like at George Washington's birthplace. And then those collections stay with that institution, or it's required by law for some reason or other, whether state dollars or tax dollars, from the federal government are going into a project. So say, highway is being built or a school or something along those lines, or you have to do an erosion project. And it's the Army Corps has to be involved. These laws kick in basically saying, okay, the government is doing this undertaking. You don't have the right to destroy our nation's heritage without doing something about it. So that's essentially what the laws are trying to do is mitigate that issue. So most of the questions we have at the MAC lab are coming from these very individual projects. So a highway went in, a school was built whatever and when. That can't be avoided. When that historic site, when you can't reroute the road around it and you can't avoid digging it up, you have to do what's called a data recovery. So a lot of our collections are from these data recoveries, and they're really significant, really amazing collections that that have had a lot of excavations. And they tend to have larger collections and so a company, there are private companies out there who are hired to do these projects, and they see that project from start to finish. So they do the research goals, they go out, they do the field work, they do the paperwork, they tie it all together into a report, and then they submit it. It gets reviewed, it gets approved, they get paid. If they hand the collection over to a repository for long term care, because part of the point of a data recovery and archeology in general is that, you know, when you do archeology, it's destroys the site. You can never go back and excavate that site again because we need all of the layers, of soil to tell time. The deeper you dig, the older you get. And we need to know where all those artifacts came from in terms of, you know, their horizontal location. Like if you were to find a series of buttons that were all clustered together, that means something very different than a series of buttons that are scattered all over a landscape. We want the association of artifacts with each other, so we control for the layers, both depth and also horizontal location. And that helps us read the soil and really tell what's going on. So anyway, so the point of what I'm saying is that, you know, archeologists go out, they do all these important studies, but it is never part of their, well not never, but it's rarely part of their mandate when they're doing those projects to relate that to everything else that's already been studied. They do have to do sort of a mention of how it fits in with the area and what other sites might exist, but one of the advantages that we have at the MAC lab and that I have is one of the curators there is that, you know, whereas each of those sites might find 2 or 3 buckles and not be able to say much about it. I have the benefit of having 10 million artifacts to choose from, from thousands of different sites across the state. So I can pull all the all the NI buckles together into one, draw all the sleeve links together into one draw and by doing that, it allows you to do a much bigger analysis and study either by time period or region, or any other little sort of mini studies. So, as an example, again, with the sleeve lengths, we have sleeve lengths from a tannery in Frederick County where we know that laborers were working there to make leather, which is extremely labor intensive and smelly, disgusting work. We have sleeve lengths from an iron furnace where we know that a lot of enslaved people were employed. We have sleeve lengths from lots of different slave quarters at different tobacco plantations. And we have sleeve lengths from urban contexts, Annapolis and Baltimore. And so we can sort of look at those how they change from site to site in a way that the people who initially did the research and they were just focused on one site, they can't necessarily do. And so one of their mandates is to make sure that people know that this is a resource that they can access. We're we're sort of like a special collections library. Like, you can't just come in and check out the artifacts and take them home with you, but you can come in by appointment and tell us what you want to look at, and we will pull it for you. And, and that is really one of the things that we want more people to take advantage of. There's not much point in having all this stuff if you don't do something with it. So we've created a lot of finding Aids online that tell people about the sites and the collections that we have at the Mac lab, and we've also created this diagram Stick artifacts website, which especially archeologists love to use because you can go to it with your ceramic or your, small find or whatever artifacts you have. Maybe it's related and, and look for a section on that website that might help you tell what it is. And so by diagnostic, what we mean is that it's datable or identifiable or we can we know we can help you do some interpretation of it. And most of the time the diagnostic artifacts are ceramics because people have been using ceramics ever since the colonists first came here. And ceramics tend to be fragile. So they break and they tend to be used every day. So again, breakable things that are used every day are more likely to, to break and get thrown out. And they changed, pretty quickly in terms of their fashion ability. So new styles are introduced on a fairly rapid basis. So there's a lot of literature on ceramics. There is less literature on clothing related artifacts and how those change over time. And a lot of that is because we don't find as much of them, you know, when a dish breaks, you might find 20 pieces of that dish like, and that accumulates over the years. But people don't deliberately throw away their buckles and buttons and things. It's, they try to hold on to those if they can. So by pulling all of the different sites together and doing studies on that, what I'm trying to do by adding those to our diagnostic website is saying, okay, here's all the links in Maryland and all the time periods of those sites to help build up enough data to make those more diagnostic, to look for trends. So, for example, very small copper alloy linked buttons with a figure eight shaped link and a faceted piece insert that looks like a jewel. Those are super common before 1750, and they're not really common after 1750. And we didn't know that before. So that's part of what we're trying to do with our collections. And our website is, you know, get the word out, get people to come use them, and then also make the diagnostic artifacts website, a tool that people can use based on our collections to help them understand their collections better and and better interpret all these sites everywhere that are being excavated across the country.

Jonathan Malriat Thank you for joining us on our first episode of the second season of Upon This Land history, Mysteries and monuments. Our presenter today was Sarah Rivers Cofield, and big thank you to Sarah for taking the time out of her busy schedule to join us for this episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, it does continue into a second part. In that second part, Sarah will talk about the projects that she has done for the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory, as well as some of her own personal connections to historic clothing, including a well-known story of a dress that she has uncovered. Until next time for our next episode of Upon This Land.

What were people wearing in the world that George Washington came from, and what can their clothing tell us about their lives? We are joined by Sara Rivers Cofield to discuss the relationship between culture and clothing. As the curator of Federal Collections at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, Sara helps us stitch together the world of 18th century clothing and fashions to the people who wore them, and about studying clothing remnants as an archaeologist.

Episode 2

The Clothes We Wore - Part 2

Transcript

Jonathan Malriat Welcome to part two of our episode with Sarah Rivers Cofield, a curator at the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory. Frequently shortened to the Mac lab. In this part, she'll talk about some of her projects working with the Mac lab, as well as some of her own personal experiences connected to the field of historic clothing. Our hosts today are myself, Jonathan Marriott, the lead interpretive ranger, and Dustin Baker, the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. How does what you find in the ground, at archeological sites and in excavations compare with the clothing that's been preserved, say, in the collections at Mount Vernon and even some of the surviving pieces at Colonial Williamsburg and other sites.

Sarah Rivers Cofield So I think the thing that, people really should be aware of when they see surviving garments is that things that survive to end up in a museum are really not always representative of what people were actually wearing all the time. And that's not, you know, that's not to say that those clothes aren't extremely valuable. We absolutely need those, because certainly as archeologists, we only find the hardware. And so without surviving textiles, we would really have none of what we need to understand how that hardware fit in context. But if you think about it, the clothes that tend to survive, even today are ones that are special for some reason or other. You know, your christening gown or it was worn by a famous person to a big event, or an inaugural ball gown, or a presidential inaugural outfit or something like that. Those survive, those get saved, and things that don't fit or that are special occasion garments, or somebody died and they never got worn, those things might get saved. But not the things that get worn every day by everybody, especially in the 18th century when cloth was really expensive. And so not only would you wear your dress until you were done with it, but then you might sell it on a second hand market and then it might get worn by people, and then it might eventually get turned into rags. And so the things that most people wore all the time don't survive. And so the clothing that survives, I saw a talk recently by, the person who runs the Cora Ginsburg gallery, which is, it's a textile sales auction house. That's very well known in the business. And, you know, she said that Cora Ginsburg called these things closet clothes. You know, the things that, like, they live on in your closet. They don't get worn out. And I think that that's really true. So those items are kind of the exceptions. And it's also true for accessories, a watch or jewelry or stuff that ends up at a museum isn't what people were wearing every day. It's not what we find archeologically because what we find archeologically is the stuff that gets thrown away. And so what archeologists have that those collections don't have is the ability to go into the quarters for the enslaved people and find evidence of their clothing and connect you to those people whose clothes almost never survive. And to get at the everyday clothing that was so common and so inexpensive that it just ended up in the trash. So we don't find the gold and the silver, usually those things usually get melted down, but we do find more silver than we find gold. And we do find more copper alloy than silver. And, and so there's sort of this hierarchy. And so the two kinds of collections complement each other really well. But without both of them, you're, we're both missing a huge part of the picture.

Dustin Baker So, You know, I'm thinking specifically of young people, but, earlier you were talking about why we should care about this, and I know we all know at least one person or kid who sees somebody wearing, like, colonial era clothing, and they laugh because to them, it's just kind of silly and, but what are some things you've been involved with to get young people and new audiences interested in this subject?

Sarah Rivers Cofield So probably my favorite project that we did with this, several years ago, I guess around 2015, the, the series Outlander was coming out, and a bunch of us at the lab were already fans of the Outlander books. And so one of my colleagues was like, hey, we should do an exhibit on Outlander. I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, go talk to the bosses. And and she was like, no, really? We should do an exhibit on Outlander. And and we ended up doing that. And now Outlander obviously is a fiction series. But it takes place, the whole series generally takes place sort of between the 1740s, for the most part, and the late 18th century, and, and at first there in Scotland and then later there in North Carolina and other parts of the colonies. And the thing is, in Maryland's collections, we have a whole lot of material culture, whether it's wine bottles or clothes, clothing, artifacts or horse related artifacts or any of that from that time period. And so one of the things we all love about the books is that, there there are, you know, when you when you're in history and archeology and you read a historical book, it is very easy to be like, oh, that term wasn't a thing back then or oh, they got that material culture all wrong. But most of us who work at the Mac lab all agreed that the Outlander books were really good. There weren't too terribly many anachronisms, and the ones that there were, you could sort of discount as part of the whole time travel angle of the book. So we thought it would be really fun to take our collections and sort of match them up to some scenes from the show. And we got permission from stars at the time who was just sort of launching the show to use their images, and we did this little traveling exhibit, and it was really fun. We have this beautiful picture of Claire in her wedding dress, and we illustrated it with buckles and buttons and jewelry parts, from our collections. And we would set it up in libraries. And here a little girls go. Look, mommy, it's a princess, you know? And and it was just it was a nice way to connect to the public and to get people thinking that, hey, those things that the English manufacturers were, were making at that time period and pushing on Scotland and the US like the those all had a lot in common, like we have that history here too. So it was a really nice sort of immersive public for.

Dustin Baker And when you're dealing with, collections of, of pieces of clothing or, artifacts, I assume sometimes you're looking at a variety of items that were owned by a single person. And what were some of those moments when you analyzed a collection of personal items like that?

Sarah Rivers Cofield So there there have been several, like I mentioned the sleeve length earlier, we have a pair of sleeve lengths in our collection that have, they're engraved with IG. And it was we were able to connect that to the shopkeeper who lived at the site, whose name was John Golder. And of course, in the 18th century, the J was written as an I. So, like, those are things we can connect with an actual person. But probably the best one I can think of is that, I was once asked to do sort of as a moonlighting job for the del Dot. They had, data recovery at, farm in Delaware that dated from the 18th all the way up to the 18th century, all the way up to the 1930s. And they found an assemblage of clothing related artifacts and, and I did this analysis sort of on nights and weekends for them. And they among the things that they had was a bunch of those linked buttons, like I mentioned, which, of course were worn by men, women and children. They were 18th century. They had a bunch of coat and waistcoat buttons, which indicates men, and they had shoe buckles. But that's also men and women. And they all were kind of clustered together. And there was kind of this question of like, well, who who did this stuff belong to? And one of the things that I had encouraged the archeologists to do on this project was radiography. So, iron artifacts, especially when you excavate them, they often look like Cheetos. They're so rusty, they you can't tell what's going on there. And so when you use X-rays for artifacts that are made of iron, you can zap through that corrosion and see the artifacts inside. And we found so many amazing clothing related artifacts that lay in our collections, whether it's hooks and eyes or maybe a pair of scissors that might have been used for mending or something. And in this particular assemblage, the X-rays revealed a knee buckle. It's a very distinctive type of buckle in terms of the size, how the axis is oriented, and it has what's called an anchor shape that slides into a buttonhole. So it's removable again for that laundering thing or for just changing out your accessories night and day. And, breeches buckle, like all those other artifacts I mentioned, was most definitely a man's artifact. So we were able to take the assemblage and that it was all kind of clustered in a cellar. And what we knew of the history of the site was that it was mostly first inhabited by a woman who was a widow. And when her son came of age, there had been this it was towards the end of the 18th century into the early 19th century, when there was a huge shift in costume, where people weren't wearing cufflinks and buckles and things like that anymore. Trousers had come in and the cuts of men's clothes were different and the buttons were different. And, and so what it seemed like what was happening was that this widow probably had a trunk or something of her husband's clothes that ended up in this basement. And because it was a breeches buckle, we knew that it was a men's wardrobe that wasn't being worn anymore. And, and they were able to tell archeologically by how the, the sediments sort of periodically built up in that cellar that it was very prone to water and flooding. And so what probably happened is that she stored away some of those guys nicer clothes, thinking, oh, I may need this someday. The cellar flooded over and over. Those things went out of style anyway, until the point when they just ended up abandoning it all down there. And had it not been for that X-ray, we wouldn't really have known that part of the story. You know, we would have been wondering, well, why didn't they end up using this? But but it was really it was a really exciting find. It was a really exciting way to sort of interpret a wardrobe that had been tucked away.

Dustin Baker Yeah. It kind of alludes to how clothing and our family and friends clothing is, is also sentimental to us.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah, absolutely.

Dustin Baker I just really appreciate you sharing your, passion for this because it's really helping me and hopefully our listeners understand that. I mean, we all can just empathize with what it feels like to have clothing on our body, how it makes us present to other people, and by seeing the clothes people would have worn in the past, it really helps you connect with them. But you have a really unique example how, historic clothing not only opened up a window into the past, but even opened up a mystery surrounding someone from the late 19th century. So if you're willing to share that story with us, that would be really great.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah, sure. So this is where I sort of have to take my, employee from the state of Maryland hat off and put on my. I collect old clothes as a hobby hat on. But I have been collecting old clothes since I was in about middle school. I sort of started with antique purses when I was 11 or 12. But, you know, archeologists, we don't find the surviving clothing and, and so, but I was always really interested in it. So I started a collection. There isn't a whole lot of overlap with what I can afford, which is an 18th century. And what I've been talking about today. But one of the outfits I bought, in 2013, I think, was, bustle dress. So I always, as a kid was really fascinated by the whole bustle era. The silk, the silk gowns, a all the buttons up the front and these huge, you know, bustle contraptions on the back and flowy fabrics and things. I thought we thought it was really great. And, and then as I got older, I could afford more for my private collection. Of course, you know, the longer you're employed, usually you your budget goes up a little bit. And so there was this dress I'd had my eye on at an antique mall in Maine, for a couple years. So I live in Maryland, but my family is all from a small town in Maine called Searsport, and they had an antique mall there. And every time I went to visit family, I would go there because this is my hobby. So I had I had my eye on this dress for a few trips and, finally I, you know, I knew I wanted to see it. It was in a glass case. I asked them to get it out, so we got it out anyway, long story short, it was like $135. I offered 100, and as long as I paid cash, they were willing to take it. And so I bought the dress, but it was the most I had ever spent on anything. And so I was feeling a little insecure about it. But as this beautiful sort of bronze silk, perfect like epitome of an 1880s bustle dress, you know, not super fancy, not like a ball gown, but also not like the kind of thing you would wear to do your laundry. Anyway, so of course, I got it home, and I'm. I'm checking it all out, and I'm at my mom's house, and I, you know, I wanted to see the structure of it. These awesome dresses are these amazing structures. Inside. All different inventions were made of different undergarments. To make that butt area stick out the way it does. And this particular one had little channels built in where you could add wires if you needed to. And so I was checking all that out and the skirt inside out, and I noticed that there was a pocket in it, and this pocket was, you know, sewn in, stuck out when you have your clothes inside out, you can see how the pockets are structured. And I hadn't seen a pocket looking at it from the outside. So I started exploring to try to figure out where the pocket was. And it turned out I was kind of concealed under this draped front fabric, of the bustle skirt. And so this is the way these skirts are constructed tends to be complex if they have the drapey parts and different trims and layers. And this one has a couple of layers to it. So anyway, it was under this draped silk front. And I could barely get to it because this the silk front was tacked in different places with thread to keep it draping just so. And, but I wanted to get to it because I could tell from having seen it inside out that I could feel something in the pocket. Anyway, so finally I figured out how to get to this pocket, and it wasn't all that easy. And I reached in, and then I pull out this clump of papers. And if any of you have ever left a receipt in your pocket when it goes through the wash, it was kind of like that, you know, like, like all balled up and, you know, so I call my mom and of course, because she's my partner in crime and and teaching. And I was like, there's something in the pocket. There's a pocket. And so she comes in and I'm trying to unravel. It wasn't as fragile as paper that's been through the wash, so I don't think it ever had been. Let out. But it was very crumpled and balled up, so I'm trying to, ball it. And then eventually I realized it's two pieces of paper. So I hand one to my mom and she and I are both very carefully. It's very thin. It like like when you hold it up, it sort of like flows in the air flow. It's super thin, lightweight paper. We're unfolding it like, who's going to read it first? Oh my gosh. So a secret passage in the packet. We're so excited. And then so we both get to kind of unfold it to the point that we can read them and we start reading. But like, it, it just it didn't make any sense. It made no sense whatsoever. It was like it was just word salad. It's like Leaf Edge Bismark or Mint Book Bank. You know, all words are recognizable words, but you know, no message. And so she and I were kind of like, what the what? It's, you know, we we both started reading to each other and and again, we're like, I have no idea what just happened. So we were very confused. And then we started joking, oh, it's a secret code in the pocket, you know? And, at the time I kept a blog, so it was very trendy in the early 20 tens to have a blog. And so I had a blog on blogspot called Commitment to Costumes. And this was, of course, before I became a parent and I had excess free time. And so I blogged about it and I was joking, and I was like, you know, as featuring all of the awesome features of this dress and everything that I was geeking out over as a costume person. And then I get to the end and I was like, ooh, maybe the secret pocket is for holding a code, you know? And, you know, I'm I'm an archeologist. I have a history degree, too, you know, I'm a scholar. I am not the person who is like, everything is a conspiracy and a secret code. Like, no, I am usually the person bursting that bubble for everybody who thinks that everything has a secret code and, you know, is some conspiracy. In the past. So this time I was like, well, in this case, I actually did find some weird secret code in the pocket, and I shared pictures of it online because I was literally I was like, I don't know what this is. You know what to do with this? And I shared it on my Facebook page and social media, for the most part, my Facebook is all my friends and especially my family like to follow the blog because some of the clothing I feature on it is stuff that I inherited, and so they like seeing what I have to say about things that came from our family. So anyway, so they shared it, they were all very excited and I got like more hits than I had ever gotten on a blog. And I think, you know, I was super excited. I want to say it was like 200, you know, which from a blog was like a lot. But all of a sudden I started getting contacted by code breaking people, cryptography people. You know, they were really into this, you know, the the costume world has its people. Well, the code breaking people are out there too. And I was like, I, I need you. I don't know what to do with this. Go for it. And, fairly early on, one of them suggested that it was a telegraph code. And after looking into that, it became pretty clear that that was indeed what it was. So in the 19th century, when the telegraph started and you're sending a telegraph, it was you were charged by the word and the line. So the longer the message, the more expensive the telegraph. And so and also the telegraph is being sent to different stations all across the country and being read by different people and passed on. And so there's no privacy to telegraphs. So what they developed in response to this. And by they I mean like all the people using the telegraph, the, you know, the hypothetical may, they developed codes. And so where a code book would be developed, where one word would stand for a whole phrase, and these were adopted by various industries. So say you're in the mining industry and you strike silver and you need to tell, you know, you're out in Utah, but you need to tell people in New York that you strike silver. You don't want everybody between you and New York to know that you just struck silver, right? You want to propagate. So the mining industry would have their own code book. And, you know, so would like the train industry, train schedules, and, and so you have to have the same book on both ends of the telegraph to be able to decode it once it gets there. So a word like leaf edge, which I don't even know if that is a word. You would look it up and figure out what phrase it stands for. But that was one of the words in my code. So we figured out pretty early it was a telegraph book, and it turned out there was hundreds of telegraph books scanned and on Google books, so I can't even tell you how many nights I spent after this on Google Books, reading Telegraph books, just skimming them, looking for the words that were in my message. And I never found them. I never, I never found one that was a match. Because unless you have the right telegraph code book, you cannot figure out what that message says. So I gave up, and every once in a while I'd get an email, from a cryptography person, like asking permission to use the pictures or something. And, and I didn't really think that much of it because nobody had solved it. And what I didn't know is that the codebreaking world did not let this go. And so they were running with it. And so apparently it got published in some list somewhere of like the 50 top unbroken codes or something. And it got picked up by a man named Wayne Chang in Manitoba at the University of Manitoba, who likes to break codes as a hobby. So here I am, a historian archeology person who collects costume as a hobby, and Wayne Chan, who as some kind of analyst, in his day job at the University of Manitoba. But like, press codes as a hobby. He he had leave for holiday, and I was like, I'm gonna try to crack his code. And and he wasn't successful at it. And I guess a couple of years later, he picked it back up again. Anyway, he he did tons of work. It's amazing. And he figured it out. So he had to go through all kinds of interlibrary loan type things, and he went back to read about the history of the Telegraph, and ultimately determined that, the, the code book he was looking for was the Army Signal Services code book for relaying the weather. And and this is the part where I think a lot of people think, oh my gosh, this is such a letdown, so much built up. It's a mystery. The code, blah, blah, blah. And no, it is a weather report. That's what it was. It was a daily weather report. But the amount of work that Wayne Chan put into this to figure this out is just it's amazing. So from a history point of view. So he's the Army was in charge of weather reports at the time. And nowadays we're like, that's weird. I don't understand, why would you do that? But when you think about it, until the telegraph was invented, people had no way of knowing what weather was coming except there, you know, maybe a barometer in their house and sort of, you know, the instinctive things that you learned working on the land and sensing the atmosphere and looking at the trees and things like that. Obviously, you know, in many ways we've lost some of that. But really, the Telegraph allowed people to know what fronts were coming their way for the first time ever. And of course, if you're the Army and you're in charge of the national defense, that would be something that might be of interest. You know, like knowing that a hurricane is coming is a really big deal for the safety of your citizens. So the Army had all of these signal centers and most of the code, line the lines on the code sheets. I had started with, a location. So Bismarck was one of the. It was the North Dakota terror, territory weather station. Calgary was another one. And so it started with a place name, and then each word after that stood for whatever the weather conditions were. And so there was two pages. One sort of was like the northern part of North America, and the other was sort of more the southern part. So Texas, Texas stations and other stations in the south, and they came together, telegraph line, according to when he said the, the only telegraph like receipt area would have had both of those full reports would have been in Washington, D.C. and that's kind of interesting because I bought this dress in Maine, but I live in the D.C. area, and this telegraph code must have originated somewhere in the D.C. area. So how did that happen? We don't really know. But yeah, so he figured out it's a weather report, and, so each word would mean something like, you know, the word event might mean something like winds to the south southeast. You know, this many miles per hour? Or sunny or cloudy or foggy. You know, each one was some long phrase to do with the weather. And you can find his paper. He published it in cryptology, but he published it in a journal called cryptology. And the full like interpretation is there. But the best part, I think, is this is so amazing of of what he did is that there were was a word in the code to indicate that it was the 27th of the month, but it didn't say what year, and it didn't say what month. And so she took the temperatures that were being reported and guessed that it had to be a fairly temperate time of year. It was an extreme winter. It was an extreme summer. And he based on the style of the dress and being from the 1880s and the code books that he had matching the words that he found, he narrowed it down to a couple of years and looked at the temperate months, and then he got the weather maps that were generated by these telegraphs from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They still have all those historic maps that were created by all these telegraphs that were reported. He got close to the maps and matched them until he found the one that matched the weather report the best. And that way he was able to sort of reverse engineer this weather map. And the report to figure out it was May 27th, 1888. So that's a lot of work. And it's yeah, I mean, it's amazing that he was able to do that and how hard it was for him to do that. And so I really think, you know, everybody who talks to me about this, they're like, are you kind of disappointed? It was just a weather report. And I'm like, no, it's not even a little bit. Because first of all, as somebody who's all, my family's from Maine and I've, you know, it's sort of been the one constant in my life and all my family in Maine, like we always talk about the weather, like the weather is the most Maine thing ever to be like a topic. So I felt like that was really fitting. But also, you know, as a history and archeology person, I can't really think of anything that is more significant to people, the that people care about more every day on a daily basis than the weather. You know, we we don't always think about it. It's kind of in the background. But I just have to think that it's so profoundly life changing for people in that time period to suddenly be able to have a weather report. Yeah. Every day I get up and I click an app on my phone so that I know what to wear that day, and I don't think that much about it. It never occurred to me until this whole story happened. Wow. What was it like for people who totally didn't know what the weather was going to be? That's kind of scary, you know? And so as archeologists, we study everyday life. You know, we study the trash that people throw away. Like, that's what I'm into. And this was such a profound window into everyday life that I wasn't at all disappointed that it wasn't some secret spy code. Instead, it it's ephemera. You know, these code sheets were a one off. They're used one time, they're marked off once they're sent, and then they get thrown away. And so that's why they don't survive. And and nobody knew what this was to figure it out. So it's a really rare survival, even though it's such a prosaic everyday thing. And so Wayne cracked the code and his university was very proud of him. And so they did a press release about it in combination with Noah, because they were part of the story, having provided the maps. And all of a sudden it was this big media frenzy about a year ago, just, I just my whole life was occupied by this topic for like two months. It was sort of my life as clickbait. You know, I would be driving home from work and my husband or I, we figure out who's going to cook, and I'm like, well, the New York Times is calling tonight, so can you cook? You know, and it was just really bizarre. But it, you know, it it did its viral thing. It went up. It went down. And it has calmed down now, but occasionally I still do get asked to talk about it. And I still have the dress and I still have the code sheets. And I still think it's a very cool story that really connects us to the past. But I don't know. And what nobody has figured out is, how did those code sheets end up in that pocket?

Dustin Baker I can't help but just see, like, the overlap where it's a remnant of one of the earliest forms of long distance communication, you know, and then all this time later, it winds up on the internet and starts reaching all these people and connecting them with their interest in it.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it was exciting. Not only that, I like. So I bought this dress in Maine. The Telegraph had to originate in DC where I live, Wayne Shan in Manitoba. One of the stations, the weather stations was like near their campus or something out there. You know, there are all these weird coincidences and ties. And I also I was I'm always still struck by the fact that Wayne and I found ourselves having our 15 minutes of fame for hobbies that had nothing to do with our day jobs, really. And so we were sort of like, I don't know how to deal with this, you know, because people were calling us at work and, it's that was really weird. But yeah, one of the things that Noah was most interested in is that for them, it made them think about the fact that women were involved in this really early weather, relay system. You know, the telegraph system. Women were involved in it, and they hadn't really thought about that before that. And so they were using it, as, as a way to look into women in the early weather and, Women's History Month. It was an article that they put up for that. But I don't I fundamentally don't know that the woman who wore this dress was actually involved in relaying messages. You know, I don't know how she ended up with that paper. And I think that it should. So first of all, the pocket itself isn't necessarily secret. It's just very secure. So having pockets in that time period wasn't that unusual. You can hide a lot. And a really big skirt. What what is weird about it is that you couldn't access the pocket without lifting up this front draped fabric and exposing the lining of the skirt, so wouldn't really be indecent. She wouldn't be uncovered accessing it in public. But you probably wouldn't do it either. It would be, like, unsightly. I guess it would be like a woman pulling her money out of her bra in a grocery store to pay. You know, it's it's a little like that. Like, she may not be exposing herself, but it's still a little like. I don't know about that. Sure. I don't know how else to really relay it. And so it's not a secret pocket, but it's a very secure pocket. And the the papers were all balled up and just forgotten there. So they can't have been that important. And there is a little nametag sewn into the back of the dress that says Bennet on it. And this is a whole other line of mystery associated with this dress. So Bennet is a very common name, and having a tag sewn into your dress sometimes, usually just means I need to get this back. Like that's why my name is on it. Either it's going out for laundering, which in this silk dress, you wouldn't have done that. Or it might mean, It might like oftentimes with historic clothes, it means, oh, this was in my attic, and I loaned it to the local theater group or something. You know, so we don't know why the tag is there. But we did try to figure this out. You tried to figure out if there were any. Bennet's working in the D.C. telegraph office in the 1880s, and there was one. But it was a man, and he was a married man, but his wife was eight months pregnant. On May 27th, 1888. And so, you know, it doesn't seem that likely that that guy was the origin of these pages. But we also don't know what happened to all of those pieces of paper all that time, you know, when the Telegraph was king and you're going through all these pieces of paper every day that are just a one off use. You know, this wasn't a time period when we everything was disposable like it is today. I think toilet paper had, like, just been invented, you know, so I get I don't think that people came up with second uses for this extra paper. And so maybe if you're a woman who has recently given birth and you have a newborn, you want to keep some random soft papers in your pocket as a just in case when you're out and about with your baby, you know, they didn't have wet wipes. I don't know what they were doing. And so maybe she did tell her husband, hey, can you just, like, bring me home the waste papers each day? Like I can use those, like, I don't know, I don't know why anybody would have retained that. You know, maybe they were just using it as a tissue instead of a hankie, like, I just. I don't know, and unfortunately, when it comes to that and the things that I still have in my possession, that's the part that we'll never know. We've decoded the weather report, but we'll never know why it survived where it did. It's just sort of fodder for the imagination.

Dustin Baker Yeah. We deal a lot with those unanswered questions here at the park. And I just think this is such a perfect story to illustrate how clothing can open up a whole world of of empathy for what it was like to live in that time. And what was going on in someone's life. And, it's just a really incredible story, and it makes you really wonder, what is it about the things that we wear today? When people who who do what you do, what will they think of us in the future?

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah. And what will survive, you know, like, check your pockets or don't and make somebody really happy 200 years from now.

Dustin Baker Yeah. So if you're going to leave something in your pockets, just make sure it's something interesting.

Sarah Rivers Cofield Yeah? Yeah. Or disappoint the future masses by having it just be weather reporter.

Jonathan Malriat And that concludes the second part of our interview with Sarah Rivers Cofield. Again, a big thank you to Sarah for joining us on these two episodes. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you catch the first part of our interview, in which she goes into details about historic clothing trends and traditions, and keep an ear out for future episodes of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments, where we'll explore other stories that are connected to the park that we protect and preserve. Here, where George Washington was born.

Continuing our conversation with Sara Rivers Cofield, we explore what archeologists look for from clothing, the personal stories it can reveal, and how her team has made historic fashions trendy again. We also hear a compelling story about how her passion for historic clothing opened a window into the past, including a mystery surrounding someone who lived during the 19th century.

Episode 3

The River We Share

Transcript

Dustin Baker Welcome to this episode of Upon This Land: History, Mystery, and Monuments. I'm here with Jonathan Malriat, and we have a special guest, Mike Nardolilli, who's the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. George Washington Birthplace is a 551 acre park with a two mile shoreline on the Potomac River. And we would estimate that almost half or more than that of all our visitors come here, just to enjoy the beach on the Potomac River. So we're very excited to have, Mike with us today. So, Mike, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin?

Mike Nardolilli I'll be happy to do so. I am Mike Nardolilli. I'm the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. I've been in this position for about five and a half years now. And, I supervise a staff of 18, and report to a commission that is appointed by the jurisdictions in the basin. So the ICPRB was, it was created pursuant to a congressionally approved compact, between the five jurisdictions in the Potomac River basin: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, the DC, and Pennsylvania. Most people don't realize that the 10% of the basin is actually located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The federal government participates, by naming commissioners as well, but it is not a signatory, to the compact itself. And so the compact created, well, what it was an advisory committee...commission. The advisory commission, has no regulatory authority. But we have been very significant since our founding in 1940 to, effectuate positive change on the river, mainly because of our reputation of being scientists and, objective, recommendations, have been adopted by the local jurisdictions.

Dustin Baker And, why was the commission created all those years ago?

Mike Nardolilli By the time of the 1930s, the once beautiful and bountiful Potomac River, had been turned into an open sewer. And it was killing aquatic species, and driving away residents, from, enjoying their, their waterway. And so Congress, actually then, started initiating discussions among the basin jurisdictions, recognizing that the, whatever solution came up, with had to be, supported by the five jurisdictions, no one jurisdiction could do it itself. DC could not do it alone. It needed all of the partners in the basin to do so. So they created this, interstate commission on the Potomac River basin. And, the charter is that our purpose is for regulating, controlling, preventing or otherwise rendering unobjectionable and harmless the pollution of the waters of the Potomac draining area, from sewage and industrial and other wastes. So that was that was our original charter. Now, in a major drought in 1966, led the compact to be amended. To include another purpose, which was, in 1970, to include cooperative water supply and other natural resources issues. And then as a result of that, in 1979, ICPRB formed its section on cooperative water supply operations on the Potomac, also known as co-op, and that would serve as a technical center on the water resources in the Potomac Basin. Basically to make sure, that, especially during periods of drought, that the, drinking water suppliers in the DC area did not drink the water, drink the, River dry, and to allow for a 100 million gallon flow by at Little Falls. And that requirement is designed to, make sure that the aquatic species in the lower Potomac, including the area near you folks and also the bay, received an adequate supply of fresh water coming down, from the basin. And so we wanted to make sure that they didn't drink the river dry. And you have this flow by at Little Falls.

Jonathan Malriat So you mentioned the drought in 1966 being this watershed moment that led to that addition of protecting water supply. Was there in particular a watershed moment or a specific event that led to the creation of the Interstate Commission in the 1940s?

Mike Nardolilli A number of, folks in Congress, had actually done, like, as field work and gone out on the river. There were a number of photographs that are out there in the 1930s of, influential Congress people holding their nose as they stood along the Potomac River. So I don't think it was any one, one event, but it was, a series of visits by Congress to the Potomac that recognized that they needed to do something about it.

Jonathan Malriat Kind of shifting gears here, since it seems like we can really break down the goals of this commission into a couple key parts. But the big key component of it is the Potomac River. So you mentioned that your jurisdictions included those previously stated ones, but what... Can you describe the Potomac River? What it it? where it is? Because it might be something that people might not immediately know off the top of their head.

Mike Nardolilli Certainly, the Potomac River is located in the, Mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast of the United States. The Potomac River drains an area roughly the size of Switzerland. About 15,000mi². It, and the basin is shaped like a horse head. The river flows from, Stanton, Virginia in the west. To the, point, what’s called Point Lookout in Maryland in the east. But it extends northward all the way up to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and then also westward to include West Virginia, and an area called the Fairfax Stone. So it's a very broad, watershed, and a very important watershed on the East Coast.

Dustin Baker So a lot of our listeners are interested in history and, you know, this is a pretty large question, but can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Potomac River? And, by that, I mean not just human history, but, geologic and natural history of it.

Mike Nardolilli Oh, sure. The, the Potomac, it's difficult to tell exactly how old it is, but some folks actually believe it's older than the Appalachian Mountains. In other words, it began flowing before the mountains were pushed up by continental drift, and the river continued to carve its valley all during that time, and so if you look at a map of the United States, in the northeast especially, you see that most rivers run north and south. Like if you take the Hudson, for example. Right. But the, Potomac actually runs, west to east. And that's, a defining characteristic. Also the Potomac, there are portions of the Potomac, especially what's called a North Branch, which are almost sitting on bedrock. And other parts are alluvial plains, such as the Shenandoah, the Monocacy, and the other tributaries that flow into the Potomac. So it has a, a varied, geology. It was settled, of course, by the Native Americans, who lived in the valley for, for many years before European contact. And they they settled in a variety of areas, and, and left their names on the landscape, such as the Anacostia River is, is named after, the, the Native American tribe. And then also, other places along the Potomac also bear those names. And so when the, the English, settlers came, after John Smith. John Smith went up the Potomac and got as far as Great... as Little Falls, which is really where DC is now. And so, you know, after after he made that venture, settlement started to pop up along the Potomac River. And, what I like to say is that the Potomac helped to create the United States. And what I mean by that is that there was a dispute between Maryland and Virginia regarding trade and tariffs on the river. In those days, each state was almost like a little country. And so they charge tariffs. If you wanted to bring goods from Maryland into Virginia and, the powers that be recognize that that that's really silly. And so let's try to agree on, on, on not charging, tariffs and also agreeing to open trade on the Potomac and this led to the, the Mount Vernon Act of 1785, that, you know, although it would settle the dispute between Maryland, Virginia, the people there recognized the need for the involvement of other states, particularly Pennsylvania. Because, you know, there's, Susquehanna, for example, provides. 50% of the water into the Chesapeake Bay. And so they wanted to bring Pennsylvania to it. And so they actually then met in Annapolis for a follow up, convention to the, the Compact of 1785. And at that meeting, it was decided that, well, you really do need to bring in all the states, to discuss all of these issues, all the problems of the Articles of Confederation. And so let's have a constitutional convention in Philadelphia. And that led to, of course, the Constitution of the United States. And so that was very, and you, you know, important legacy of the Potomac River, to the entire country. Now, as the settled settlers moved west, the nation was in danger of being divided, not north and south, but east and west. Because the settlers who crossed the mountains and were then using the Ohio to transport their goods down, to, down the Mississippi and then down to New Orleans, were... were really under the, the danger of falling under the control of, nations like Spain, France and England. But actually, it was George Washington's vision, of developing east-west communications across the mountains to try to pin the western part of the country to the east coast rather than have them fall under the, dominion of, foreign powers. And so that's why his great vision was the creation of the C&O canal, which would then move west from Georgetown, here in DC, all the way out to, you know, and joining with the Ohio at Pittsburgh. Now, the C&O Canal never made it to, Pittsburgh, but it did go as far as Cumberland. And really, served that purpose of linking together east and west. It was then supplanted by the B&O railroad, which also followed the Potomac River uut that way and, also linked east and west. And so, George Washington's vision was accomplished that the, the, the settlers over the mountains, as it were, were tied to the East Coast. And so the nation can then grow all together. Now, four American presidents were born in the Potomac River watershed, of course. Of course you folks down in Colonial Beach, George Washington was born in the Potomac River watershed, as was his, nearby neighbor of James Monroe, also from Colonial Beach. But two other presidents also were born in the Potomac River watershed. James Buchanan, was born in Oak Grove, Pennsylvania, which is part of the watershed. And also Woodrow Wilson, who was born in Staunton, Virginia in the Potomac River watershed. Potomac played an important role in the American Civil War. The boundary between really north and south. You have John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The battle of Manassas in Virginia, the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in DC. All of those events took place within the Potomac River basin. So it really has a great, history and a legacy to to the nation and to, to to all of us, who are Americans.

Jonathan Malriat So that's a great overview of the history of the Potomac, and both cultural and a bit to the natural. I know the Interstate Commission one of the big things you also look at is the science of it. So from a conservation and even restoration viewpoint, what makes the Potomac different from other basins or even other rivers.

Mike Nardolilli Oh the Potomac, we, we like to call it the Nation's river because it, on its shores is the nation's capital of, Washington, D.C.. But then the river itself provides drinking water to the Washington, DC area. And so the the Washington, DC and Arlington, Virginia are 100% dependent on water from the Potomac River. I’ll say it again, 100% dependent. And we only have, reservoir capacity, for a one day supply of water or so, if you can imagine that, if something happened to the Potomac River, if it was contaminated by, by, by accident or even by, a deliberate means, that would shut off water to, the nation's capital, to institutions such as, the, Department of Homeland Security, the Congress, the White House, and across the river in Arlington, the same thing. It attaches to that that would be the, Pentagon. So you have all of these institutions that are dependent on water from the Potomac River. And when I say that it's just, drinking water. I really, should expand that, because if you actually have to shut off the intakes, on the Potomac River because you say a contamination event from oil or something like that. You also lose fire protection because, they have to shut down the intakes and there's no water pressure, for the hydrants. And so you don't have any any method of controlling fires in the District of Columbia. And then also it shuts down, hygiene. And so you don't have the hospitals can't operate, for example. And so it's much worse than Covid is, that the federal workforce simply just can't go home, at work remotely because, their homes and the surrounding jurisdictions of, so the suburbs would also be affected, maybe not within one day, but certainly for a couple of days of being, cut off from the supply of water there. So you have a whole system that's dependent on the Potomac River for the operation of the federal government.

Dustin Baker Now, so many people rely on this river. But the river obviously really shapes the natural world as well. Do you have a sense of how much of the shoreline of the Potomac is still, to this day, undeveloped?

Mike Nardolilli Yeah, that's a very hard question to, to answer. We have calculated the tidal, side of the Potomac, in Virginia and 55% of the shoreline of the tidal Potomac, which goes all the way up to Little Falls, at least in the DC area, is undeveloped. And we we suspect that that that number probably is true on the other side of the river in Maryland as well, because of the similarity of, of, of land use, it becomes much, much more difficult when you go upstream, into the freshwater part of the Potomac River, because then you get, not only the main stem of the river itself, but then all the tributaries, such as the Monocacy, the Shenandoah, and becomes much more hard, it's harder to calculate. So I don't have any hard numbers, for you for that. But that's that's what we have and its what I have related before.

Jonathan Malriat What are some of the other challenges that the Interstate Commission and even the Potomac River basin is facing? Are there any other specific ones that you're preparing for or trying to identify?

Mike Nardolilli Yes. We, we divide our job really into two areas, water quality, and water quantity. So we've already talked about the water quantity side of the ledger. The water quality side is that we are actively working to address, some of the major problems on the Potomac, such as salt use. You know, salt in the Potomac is very bad. Has been in the, in the freshwater portions of the Potomac, particularly because you have a lot of freshwater aquatic species that, cannot survive, high salt content. And so that that's a lot, what we are trying to do is get people to use less salt when it, when it, when there is a icing or a snow event. First to shovel it, and then to skip or use only like a, a coffee cup full of salt on your driveway or your sidewalk. And finally to, sweep it off after the, the event happens and reuse it. So we are hoping that people will, modify their salt use so that, there's less salt going into the river. The second thing we're working on is to really try to improve water quality, by natural methods. And that is, freshwater mussels serve the same role that, oysters do in the bay. Freshwater mussels, actually serve as filters for, for freshwater. And so the problem is, is they can't get upstream right now because of dams four and five on the Potomac. And so we have actually secured funds to build, eel ladders, to allow the eels to move upstream, both in the, to go past dam four and then five. And why why eels? Well, eels are the transport method for the mussels. The mussels? I actually, put their larva on to the gills of the eels and the eels actually transport them upstream. So if we can, get these eel ladders constructed, we should actually have a cleaner river as a result. And in your neck of the woods, and throughout the Potomac, really, we're working on trying to identify the causes of harmful algal blooms. And then also to, to rectify them so that they don't interfere with the public enjoyment of the river because, once, once you have a, a harmful algal bloom, for example, it'll it'll, you know, it really does cut down recreational uses of the river and, really does, make it a, make an imperative that, the, the harmful algal blooms be addressed. So we're looking at that as well. So those are three of the things that we're focused on now.

Dustin Baker It's it's okay if this is something you don't know. I just was recently talking with a gentleman who, makes traditional split oak eel pots. And he was telling me that the eels that live in the Potomac River will actually, travel out to the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean to spawn. And that would be a migration of hundreds, if not thousands of miles. So is that true? Did those eels actually do that?

Mike Nardolilli Yes, they do. And, they, there's a term for it, and I'm I'm not a scientist, but there's a special term for a type of species that that lives both in a freshwater and in saltwater in terms of its, life cycle. But, yes, the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is where these eels originate. They're very small, silvery like eels. And then, through the, I guess, as they drift through the water and they come up the east coast of the United States, and they come up the, the various rivers and streams, and then they, they grow to a large sizes there, and then they, they wind up, like going back down and, going out to the Sargasso Sea. And so, yes, it is true. And what is amazing is that in my own native Arlington, nobody knew about those eels, until there was a polluting event on one of the golf courses in Arlington that put all this herbicide into the, into what's called Donaldson Run and Gulf Branch. And then all of these dead eels start appearing in these little streams that ran through these suburban neighborhoods. Because that's where they went. They they went, that’s where they grow. They go up there and they, they grow into large, larger eels and then then swim back out to sea and go to the Sargasso Sea. So, yes, it is and I, I forget the term for it, but there is a specific type of, name of a species that has this sort of, really, really a, amazing, life cycle, sort of the, the, aquatic version of the monarch butterfly, but of course the monarch butterfly is a lot prettier to look at than than slimy eels, but, well, they they have a great story to tell.

Dustin Baker I mean, I'm getting a deeper appreciation for those slimy eels.

Jonathan Malriat It really sounds like those eels are in a sticky situation with those dams on the river. So I'm glad to hear you guys are working on trying to take care of that challenge. But another challenge that we hear a lot is invasive species. So how has that been a part of your work?

Mike Nardolilli Yes. And let me just say that we had a conference, this fall, on invasive species. Two of them being the, the snakehead, and then the second one being the blue catfish. So what we're trying to do is, we’re trying to encourage people to eat those species, and actually we served snakehead and blue catfish at the event. And people seem to enjoy it. And so if we can get people to and and the state of Maryland has changed the name of the snakehead fish to the Chesapeake Channa in order to try to get people to eat it because nobody wants to eat a snakehead. So, so but we'll see if that is successful. And, try to eat our way out of invasive species.

Jonathan Malriat I will say from personal experience, I've one of the local restaurants out here has snakehead, and it's surprisingly tasty.

Mike Nardolilli Yes it is, yes it is. I mean, I agree.

Jonathan Malriat So the challenges you've identified now, how do you go about managing them? How do you go about achieving success on those, especially considering you're working with five very different political jurisdictions and you're a commission kind of not a full regulatory body?

Mike Nardolilli Well, it's a really good, well, good question. And, what we have done is, collected a lot of data and, share the data with the jurisdictions and, and working with, advocacy groups, who are out there, trying to preserve land or conserve land. For example, we, we have what we call the Drinking Water Source Protection Partnership. And we have put together a land prioritization tool which is designed to identify those parcels of land along the river that are particularly important for drinking water. And we share those with the land trusts and, and other jurisdictions to encourage them to conserve or protect that land. In terms of, encouraging, other actors to, to, to make changes to certain land use decisions we, we've, produced what we call Chessie BIBI. We looked at all of the little streams that feed into the Potomac River and grade them. And then that information then is used by Potomac Conservancy to put together their report card every year on or every other year on the Potomac River. And what that shows is that the river actually has been improving in quality, from a D a few years ago to, now now I think it's a B-minus. But all of the, all of the actors in the area, working together can really make a difference. And we view ourselves as a as a catalyst and a coordinator, and, and a sharing of information so that people and we don't, so we have no proprietary, control over our information. We give it out to everybody who wants it. And they could use that information to, effectuate positive change.

Jonathan Malriat What successes have you had in the past? Are there any key successes that the Commission is really proud of, or any that even you yourself have been a part of spearheading?

Mike Nardolilli Well, very good question. When George Washington was, living at Mount Vernon, he actually made more money from fishing than he did from farming, because of the bounty of the Potomac River. Now, over time, the Potomac River was severely overfished. And one of the key species there was the shad. And the shad make it makes its run in the spring. And then, it, that then, you know, brings out a lot of fishermen, to, to tackle the shad as they move upstream. And it's not just the Potomac. The James River also has a shad run. But over time, the shad disappeared. And so in the 1990s, the ICPRB made it a point of bringing shad back to the Potomac River. And so how do you do that? Well, you engage all the school kids along the river to actually raise the tiny, the tiny baby shad, until they get big enough to be released into the river. And over time, that happened. And, we had a we've had a lot of success in bringing Shad back to the Potomac River, to the point where we had a very successful shad run last, last year. And it's, amazing to see the fishermen on the, the banks of the Potomac, reeling in the, the shad as they go by. The second sort of an indicator of the improvement of the water quality in the Potomac is that dolphins are now going further and further upstream in the Potomac. Maybe they're eating the shad, but they're moving upstream. Now, they've been reported as far as the 301 bridge, not too far from your neck of the woods. And so we're really excited that, these, indicator species are all returning to the river, and that gives us, really, good confidence that we're doing the right thing and improving the water quality in the stream. So I guess the final thing I'd like to mention is that, we, are very much focused on spills in the Potomac, to make sure that they don't foul the drinking water supply. And so we run what's called the spill network. And we we take all the data of people who have, told us about spills or or sewer overflows, and we run a model, and we we provide that to the, drinking water suppliers who then can either, fill up their tanks or, or, close their intakes until the plume passes and things like that. And we urge people, to make sure that when you're on the Potomac River and you see something like a polluting event or something doesn't smell right, or it doesn't look right to tell some local environmental group or tell the local authorities about it, so that we can we can we can do something about it. But a lot of people just will ignore it. But the more, more people who go actually on the river, and I know I visited the beach down at the birthplace, and, its a a very nice beach down there. And so what, if we get more people on the river, more eyes on the river, more use of the river. That that's a fantastic resource for all of the, environmental agencies and the environmental groups to tap into it. So, right now in the District of Columbia, we are working with a number of groups to try to bring swimming back in the Potomac. It is actually now banned in the DC portion of the river. But as the river quality gets better, we hope that maybe people will start going swimming in the Potomac in our neck of the woods, and therefore provide a good eyes and ears on the Potomac.

Jonathan Malriat Really seems like a lot of your push is collaboration, getting people involved and different partners involved. And it doesn't mean just the big regulatory and the big jurisdictions, but even individuals. And so what can our visitors and our audience out here, and even potentially those who don't live on the or in the Potomac Basin? What can they do to support the goals of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River?

Mike Nardolilli Okay, let's focus on the water quantity side. I think everybody, is very much aware of the droughts in the West. And now we've had some droughts on the East Coast as well, including those in the Potomac River basin and also, droughts up in the New York City area that have led to, wildfires. So we urge people to use our water resources wisely. We have a tendency to just ignore the cost of water, and take it for granted. So we urge people that don't don't waste water and don't pollute it by the use of salt, as I mentioned before, or other contaminants. And we urge people to, to drink tap water instead of buying bottled water. Tap water is actually highly regulated by the government. The bottled water is not, and so actually, people who shy away from tap water, to take to use bottled water are actually not only paying more, but they're getting a more questionable product. And then finally, it's in a wasteful container, a plastic bottle. So, we urge people to, across the country to, to drink tap water rather than buying bottled water. And then also I mentioned before, is that, to, to really be, the eyes and ears of the environmental community on the, on the river, to get out on the river to, to, to go kayaking, to go canoeing, to go fishing, to, to really enjoy the waterway. Because the more people that that can relate to, to the waterway, the better it will be. We have found that, our best stewards of the of the land and the water resources in our area are those who get out and about, who are opt outside, as it were, instead of going to, shopping center. When those people get out and about and actually see the resources, see the, the, the wildlife, for example, and being able to experience, the birds and, turtles and everything else that calls the river home, the better stewards they are of the land and the water resources. So, we urge people to, to go to their, their neighborhood park to go to the state park system, which is excellent in Virginia, to go to the national parks and to, to enjoy their parks, because that'll that'll really help the river.

Jonathan Malriat So what resources can visitors and audience members that are interested in trying to participate and help out? What resources are available to them? Where can they go to learn more about different techniques they can use to help conserve water, but also even help report sightings of pollutants and contaminations?

Mike Nardolilli I think one of the best ways to interface with, groups that are focused, on on water and land conservation is to go to the Land Trust Alliance website, and I unfortunately don't have the exact URL for that. But if you just type land trust alliance, what will pop up is a map of the United States that lists all the land trusts that are out there. And the land trust are not only designed to try to, conserve land by putting land on a conservation easement. But they will also advise landowners about the best management practices for taking care of their land. For example, on the, on the agricultural community, trying to fence out, cattle, and other livestock from the streams, that, that that's very, very helpful. Also to try to have a riparian buffer around the land, so that there's even if you do have a home and a yard, that is on the water if you have a 35 to 50ft or maybe even a 100ft buffer of land that is allowed to grow wild, trees and, bushes and other things, that actually will cut down the amount of pollutants running off of your land into the river by as much as 75 or 80%, just putting in that 35 to 50ft buffer strip along the land, along the river. So, those are those are some of the things that the land trusts will advocate. Of course, you can always touch base with, a lot of the watershed groups that are out there. We had a very good run of, of supporting and creating watershed groups in our area, including the Anacostia Watershed Society. And these groups are out there to, to preserve the land. You probably have a, Riverkeeper in your area, wherever you live. They're all over the United States now. The river keepers, so they are out there, in boats to, see if there's any sort of, point sources of pollution on the river and to report it to the appropriate authorities. So, like I said, land trusts, river keepers, and other environmental organizations. But don't overlook the Department of the environment of your your local government as well. They they can provide very valuable help in the, you know, I mean, like a cheat sheet of, things to cut down on salt use and other things.

Dustin Baker Well, you know, the history and culture of the Northern Neck of Virginia is so connected to the Potomac River. So on behalf of all the people who live out in this region and and all the other states connected by the Potomac, we want to thank you for the work that you do and, for taking time to to speak with us and share your message.

Jonathan Malriat Thanks for listening to this episode of Upon This Land History, Mysteries, and monuments. A thank you to Mike Nardolilli, the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, for taking the time out of his schedule to share his knowledge and expertise on the broader Potomac River, and then even helping us tie to our story here that lies right on the shores of that same river. And join us on our next episode, where we'll be going back in time to look at the bicentennial, not the bicentennial of the United States, but the bicentennial of a man very close to us here at the park, the person who we’re named after George Washington. So we'll be going back to 1932. And the run up to that, to the celebrations of the bicentennial of George Washington's birth. So join us for that episode.

The Potomac River connects millions across four states and D.C. Known as "the Nation's River", it greatly influenced American history and George Washington's life. Today, the park’s Potomac River Beach is a popular destination at his birthplace, highlighting the importance of protecting the river's health for recreation and wildlife. In this episode, we welcome Michael Nardolilli, Executive Director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, to discuss the river we share.

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