Archaeology Project
In November, 2009 under the direction of Dr. Christopher Lindner, excavation began at the Parsonage of the First Reformed Church of Germantown in the hope of finding evidence of the original structure. The Parsonage’s left side was erected about 1743 and the right side about 1767. The dig began below a south-facing window, looking for the original entrance. The Parsonage excavation is an on-going project that includes summer field school opportunities open to high school students.
Excavations offer the most valuable information to interpret daily life among Palatine immigrants, their descendants, and their neighbors from 1710 onward. Humans unintentionally leave behind traces of their lives such as pottery fragments, buttons, thimbles, and bones. By analyzing the things people discard and the things they preserve for others, archaeologists recover the culture of those who came before.
