Public invited to tour archaeological dig at former Hamline-Midway home of 19th-century farm family – Twin Cities
When the Warner family left the farm behind in southern Minnesota for big city living around 1881, St. Paul was still just a community of 40,000 or so residents, but a city on the move. During the next decade, its population would triple. The Warners, too, were looking to new frontiers, both personally and politically.
By 1886, the Warners had moved into a two-story home at 830 Simpson St. bordering Hamline University, a key opportunity for Mary A. (Drake) Warner’s five daughters. Mary Warner — who had lost two sons in 1875 — became active in prison reform, women’s suffrage and the temperance movement, which would give rise to Prohibition. Her husband Jarius Rich Warner would open a store at Snelling and Englewood avenues, only to die in 1892, 25 years before his wife.
Beyond their obituaries and a newspaper ad for their lost dog, not much remains of their legacy. Trained archaeologists have nevertheless zeroed in on their backyard shed.
DISHES, GLASSWARE, BUTTONS, A DOLL FACE
Every other year since 2017, Hamline University Professor Brian Hoffman has unearthed the brick and limestone remnants of the Warner’s shed and invited his students to come help scour through the dirt for the bric-a-brac of local history.
Hunting through a dig site in what would have been the Warner’s backyard, they’ve found dishes, glassware, window glass, buttons, a doll face, marbles and a long limestone structure angled in such a way to give the possible appearance of a drainage spout. Then, by summer’s end, a backhoe refills the former Warner property, leaving a future class to repeat the exercise.
A water drainage spout? Next to a pit? Limestone is angled in a way that feels intentional, not just accidental destruction. Dishes, glassware, window glass, buttons, a doll face, marbles.. the past gives up its secrets! pic.twitter.com/G5dTttu0Am
— Frederick Melo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) August 9, 2021
“It’s kind of micro-history,” said Hoffman, chair of Hamline University’s Department of Anthropology, while standing three feet below ground level behind East Hall and the university library. “(This is) very specific place-based history about ‘here.’ … How was this backyard used? But that’s part of a bigger question in society: How did we get to have the kinds of backyards that we have today?”
Hoffman has gone about as far as he’ll go in his search for answers to those questions, at least at this dig site. Within weeks, the sizable hole will be filled for good, probably not to be unearthed for another generation or more.
OPEN HOUSE AT SHED SITE
History buffs will get one last chance to visit the Warner’s shed in person from 3 to 6 p.m. Friday, when Hoffman and fellow archaeologist Sofía Pacheco-Forés show off key artifacts as part of an interactive discussion. Activity stations will include an opportunity for kids to draw a grid map, like the ones archaeologists use to document their findings on location.
Unlike previous open houses at the Warner’s shed, residents will not be invited to jump down into the dig site and touch history for themselves. They’ll get close enough, however, to channel it.
“This year it will just be show-and-tell,” said Hoffman, who has taught classes and coordinated summer field work related to on-campus and off-campus “backyard history” since 2004. “What we do is not just about going out and trying to make National Geographic-worthy discoveries. This is not dramatic archaeology. We feel like there’s value in having an investigation of history be about a way of connecting a community to its past.”
WHAT HAPPEN TO THE HOUSE?
Now, whatever became of the Warner house itself?
After the Warners, Sophie Solberg, a Norwegian immigrant and widower, ran the home at 830 Simpson St. as a boarding house. Her husband, who had moved to the states before her, had died before she arrived, leaving her to raise three young kids alone. She later remarried.
The property was sold to Hamline University in 1916 and served for a while as a dormitory, among other uses.
It was then relocated to 846 Simpson St. in 1946, and yes, Hoffman has tracked down one of its former tenants and had her speak to his anthropology class this summer about her memories of St. Paul in the 1940s and 1950s.