Introduction
The Revere House site is located on the traditional homelands of the Massachusett Tribe. The Mather family lived in what is likely the first English-style house on the North Square property in the 1670s. North Square in Boston’s North End was one of the first areas where Europeans settled in Boston. It has been a center of activity since the 1630s. Boston Harbor and the docks were close to the house until landfilling moved the shoreline of Boston further east.
The Mather family included Maria Cotton, her husband Reverend Increase Mather, and their son, Cotton Mather. Reverend Cotton Mather played a role in the witchcraft hysteria of the late 17th century and produced extensive writings on the Salem Witch Trials.
Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library
After the Mather house burned down in 1676, the house that the Revere family would ultimately own was built on the vacant lot around 1680. The house was already around 90 years old when the Revere family moved in. The Reveres owned the house from 1770 to 1800 and lived there from 1770 until around 1780 and again in the 1790s.
By 1800, the North End was becoming crowded and more affluent residents began to leave. In the 1800s, North Square became a place where sailors and others who moved frequently could stay in a boarding house. Nearby North Street became a notorious red-light district with many brothels.
Catherine Wilkie purchased the house in 1867. It served not only as a home for Catherine, her husband, James, and their family, but also housed a saloon. Catherine likely rented some of the rooms to boarders as well. She owned the property until 1891.
Revere descendant John Phillips Reynolds, Jr. bought the house in 1902, and in 1908, the Paul Revere Memorial Association turned it into a house museum, now one of the oldest in the country.
In 1983, the Paul Revere Memorial Association wanted to improve the backyard for the house’s many visitors. Before they started, archaeologists from Boston University (BU) came to do an archaeological survey.
The BU archaeologists dug five excavation units in the yard. Though the house was lived in for over 300 years, many of the earlier layers, including when the Revere family lived there, had few artifacts. During that time, the property extended back further from the street, and their artifacts were likely in the back of the yard where a building was added in 1835.
The archaeologists did find an intact privy or outhouse in the back of the current yard. This privy contained many artifacts. Of the 13,796 artifacts the archaeologists found, over 5,200 of them came from the privy. Link to the spreadsheet catalog of the artifacts excavated at the Revere House.
In 2019, the City of Boston Archaeology Program, that manages the collections found at the Revere House, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to photograph, catalog, and share these artifacts online. The complete catalog of artifacts can be found on the webpage for the Paul Revere House archaeological site.
The Privy
The privy at the Revere House was just over 3.5 feet wide by 6.25 feet long. It was likely a “two seater” having two openings on its bench allowing multiple residents of the house to use the bathroom at the same time.
The artifacts found inside it reveal many stories about the people who used them, but first the archaeologists needed to know how old the privy deposit was so they could understand whose artifacts they were.
Archaeologists use the dates artifacts were made or invented to establish a Terminus Post Quem (TPQ, “limit after which”) at a site. A soda bottle from the privy was made by a company that opened in 1864. This was the youngest datable artifact in the privy, so we know it had to have been filled after 1864.
In 1848, the City of Boston established a public water system bringing water to the city from Lake Cochituate in Framingham, 20 miles away. Yet not everyone had access to it. Many landlords would not pay to plumb houses for water. Bottled mineral water provided a safe alternative for people who did not have easy access to the clean drinking water.
For most of the 19th century, 19/21 North Square functioned as a boarding house, but for 24 years it was also a residence for a working North End family with growing children, the Wilkies. From 1867-1891, the Wilkies raised a family, ran a boarding house, operated a saloon, and witnessed the constant changes in their neighborhood from their home in North Square. It was the first home James and Catherine Wilkie owned. They were both immigrants, James from Scotland and Catherine from Ireland, who rented various properties in the North End after their marriage in 1857. Together they had eight children, but sadly only four survived childhood. Government records associated with the Wilkies’ residence at 19/21 North Square suggest that Catherine was the primary property owner while James held a number of jobs.
The Wilkies don't seem to have run as robust a boarding house operation as had the house’s previous owners. In their 24 years at the property, only three non-family members are identified as residents. Perhaps they occasionally rented out rooms, rather than maintaining a full boarding house operation. With this in mind, we instead see the house as a space where the lives of an immigrant family emerge from the written and archaeological record as they raised children and navigated their North End world.
Among the thousands of artifacts, someone, possibly one of the Wilkies, tossed a plate into the privy where it lay hidden in the dirt for more than 150 years before it was recovered by archaeologists. This plate inspires questions about the past and the people who used it long ago. Who purchased and owned this plate? How was it used? By digging into these questions we might come to better know those who owned this everyday object
The PLate
Archaeologists found the pieces of this decorated plate in the dirt and decomposed feces of the Wilkie privy.
Archaeologists rarely find items that are fully intact. Most people did not throw out perfectly usable plates. The artifacts archaeologists recover are essentially trash. They are the things that their owners and users thought were no longer useful or valuable and were thrown out. Archaeologists love trash! These items tell otherwise unwritten stories about the everyday lives of people. Archaeologists treat artifacts like pages in a book, and it is their job to study the artifacts and arrange them into a story about the past.
What stories can a plate reveal?
Archaeologists bring all of the artifacts they find back to their laboratory where they are carefully washed, sorted into parts, cataloged, and sometimes put back together. It is through this process that we learn about objects.
When archaeologists brought this plate back to their lab, it was in pieces, covered in dirt and grime, and stained by being in the ground for over a century. After they cleaned and cataloged it, they were able to glue it back together.
Now re-assembled, we can see the full decoration of the plate
Plates can be used for many things. They can hold food, they can teach lessons with their decoration, they can be used as home décor, or they can go on exhibit in a museum. The artifacts found with the plate also help us understand how it could have been used. The archaeologists wanted to know: How did the Wilkie family use this plate?
Explore several interpretations of the Paul and Virginia plate alongside other artifacts found with it in the privy below.
Mealtime
Victorian women were raised to use dinnertime to reinforce family ties and moral virtues such as purity and modesty. Most dishes recovered from the Wilkie privy are plain plates with almost no ornamentation.
The Paul and Virginia plate is unique from the privy.
The messages of purity and modesty symbolized by Paul and Virginia could reinforce these virtues as the family gathered for their meals.
Could the plate have been used in the saloon James Wilkie operated out of the house? With a doorway onto the street, the saloon joined several others in the neighborhood. George Moore ran another saloon just down the road. In 1876, George joined the Wilkies as a bartender.
The privy excavation revealed several soda bottles rather than the liquor bottles one might expect from a saloon. Soda or mineral water bottles were often recycled during their lifetimes. After they were emptied, their owners returned them to the manufacturer for refilling. Liquor bottles lasted much longer, while beer bottles were recycled at an even faster rate than water bottles. They may not have been deposited in the trash in the same way.
The 19th-century saloon was a gathering place. Men in the North End could step inside the door at 19 North Square and sit in the front room for a drink or perhaps a bite to eat along with some conversation. Hundreds of clam shells were recovered from the privy. The clam has been a staple in New England diets for thousands of years. At low tide they are easily harvested from the shoreline. In the North End, clams, mussels, oysters, cod, lobsters, and countless other varieties of seafood were caught daily and sold directly from the piers.
Plates, utensils, drinking vessels, and other tableware items regularly decorated eating spaces and became part of the fabric of the household. With them we can briefly see through the eyes of the user and understand the values and choices of the purchaser.
Decoration
This plate was the only one of its kind found in the privy fill. Could that mean the family only owned one of them? Possibly. Other identical plates, if they existed, could have been disposed elsewhere. Given its morality message, the plate could have taken a more central position in the household. People have used plates as decorations for centuries. Maybe the Wilkies chose to display this plate, instead of using it for food.
As a decoration it might have adorned the mantle above the fireplace. Imagine an evening scene with oil lamps flickering light across the room, and Mr. Wilkie sitting in his chair with a pipe. As the children played on the floor with their toys, the Paul and Virginia plate could have sat above them casting remembrances of the story’s lessons over the home.
Choose below to either explore the privy and the daily life of the residents of a brothel at 27/29 Endicott Street, or click the link to read the conclusion of this online exhibit.
For more information on the Paul Revere House Site
References and Credits
The text of this exhibit was written by Thomas Begley, with support by Dr. Jane Becker and Joseph Bagley and with extensive reviews, comments, and guidance by the staff of the Paul Revere Memorial Association
Image Credits (in order of appearance)
Merrill, Frank T. "North Square, Paul Revere House." Drawing. 1869. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/6h441044f (accessed April 12, 2022).
"Paul Revere House, North Square, North End." Photograph. [ca. 1898]. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/br86b750w (accessed April 12, 2022).
Abdalian, Leon H. "Paul Revere House, 19 North Square." Photograph. April 18, 1956. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/d504rr361 (accessed April 12, 2022).
Butler, J. W. "Bartenders and waiters, Bell in Hand Tavern, Pie Alley, Boston, Mass., February, 1901." Photograph. 1901. Historic New England, https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:cf95n269h (accessed May 24, 2022).
Text References
Elia, Ricardo. "Archaeological Investigations at the Paul Revere House in Boston, Massachusetts". Office of Public Archaeology, Boston University, 1997.
Keim, Alexander. "Boston Inside Out: A Brothel, a Boardinghouse, and the Construction of the 19th-Century North End's Urban Landscape Through Embodied Practice". Dissertation, Boston University, Archaeology Department, 2015.
Luiz, Jade. "'A house recommended': the sensory archaeology of sexuality, embodiment, and creation of space in a mid-nineteenth-century brothel in Boston, Massachusetts". Dissertation, Boston University Archaeology Department, 2018.