Old town well: Team to dig for clues

The old town well, tucked in a corner of the Rowan Public Library site, still has a granite cap from one of its incarnations and parts of a forged iron assembly used to lift and lower buckets for water. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

Kenneth Robinson, director of public archaeology at Wake Forest University, speaks Thursday with Historic Salisbury Foundation director Jack Thomson. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post.

Wake Forest University archaeologist Kenneth Robinson and student assistant Mary Kate Wagner marked out a grid over which they would use ground-penetrating radar next to the well. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

Jack Thomson, left, Mary Kate Wagner and Kenneth Robinson peer down the hole of the old town well, which still has a depth of about 10 feet to where it has been filled in. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

By Mark Wineka

mwineka@salisburypost.com

Rowan Public Library has called in archaeological help from Wake Forest University to determine where the original structure may have been positioned that covered the 250-year-old well on its site.

Kenneth Robinson, director of public archaeology at Wake Forest, set out grids next to the well Thursday and used ground-penetrating radar to measure various levels of compaction in the soil, possibly indicating where the posts were located for the original cover.

Find those post holes, and the library will have the dimensions of that first structure.

The data collected through the radar device Thursday will be taken back to the university for processing, analyzing and creating a map.

Robinson and his student assistant, Mary Kate Wagner, plan to return next Wednesday for an excavation of the site that should provide even better information.

Robinson said Thursday the radar was a "good, preliminary way" to find where the posts were, besides giving clues to the location of other things. Often, these town wells had aprons next to them of brick paving or pottery shards in the highest-traveled and wettest areas.

The radar shows anomalies in the soil, and the old postholes would be a type of anomaly.

The digging of a posthole disturbed the natural soil, and when it was pulled out, the fill would be of a different color and compaction. Sometimes even artifacts are found in those holes.

Thanks to an anonymous donor, the library was able to call in Robinson.

It eventually will rely on experts and timber framers at Old Salem to construct a well cover from the Federal period that would most likely be close to what residents saw in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The well is a significant part of Salisbury's early history.

Lord Cornwallis and his British troops camped near the well and surely refreshed themselves with water from it.

A young Andrew Jackson also drank from the well, considering he practiced law in Judge Spruce Macay's office less than a stone's throw away. Jackson later would become the country's seventh president.

This well would be about the only thing Jackson would be familiar with today.

In Salisbury's early days, residents and visitors often relied on street wells scattered throughout the town.

The well on the library site apparently provided water through the 19th century and until Salisbury's municipal system was in place.

"I bet you Daniel Boone drank out of it," Rowan Public Library Director Jeff Hall said, noting how close Boone's Salisbury business dealings would have brought him to the well.

Hall said the well also had to be "a major watering spot" for people traveling on the Great Wagon Road through Salisbury.

The street wells commonly employed a rope, bucket and windlass system.

This one has long been closed with brick walls and a granite top, which probably was from its last days of use. Imbedded in the granite are forged iron remnants of the windlass system (with crank).

The well hole goes down about 10 feet and currently is filled with some trash.

The late Rowan County historian James S. Brawley often argued that the "Jackson Well" should be restored and put back into working order.

"An undertaking of this kind would be one more great tourist attraction for this colonial city so rich in history," Brawley wrote in 1962.

Historic Salisbury Foundation is helping the library with the project, even lining up a backhoe that will be used in the dig next week.

The well is thought to date back to around 1760.

Hall said a second well covering was of a Victorian vintage (indicated on 1896 Sanborn maps). the library also has good photographic evidence of former covers.

Hall guesses the original covering would have been about 14- by-14 feet with a pyramid-shaped roof. A more elaborate example of the Federal-styled structure can be found in Williamsburg, Va., he said.