Thanks to Evergreen Annual Fund donors and a record-breaking Art of Living event, faculty member Ulrike Krotscheck, and a team of student archaeologists spent four weeks excavating the original George Washington Bush Farm near Tumwater.

The Bush Prairie Farm dig is Evergreen’s first archaeological field study.

“It’s hard to identify just one or two gratifying moments that I observed in my students last summer,” reflected Krotscheck. “Their sheer enthusiasm was contagious, and their dedication to the task at hand, whether it was field work, leading public tours, research projects, or lab work, was formidable. It was a pleasure for me to work with such a strong group of enthusiastic students.”

Krotscheck received a Sponsored Research grant and a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) grant. She also received one of eleven Faculty Foundation Grants issued for 2014-15 by the Evergreen Annual Fund.

“This work would have been impossible to conduct without this generous support,” she noted. “We were able to purchase important equipment and supplies that are quite specific to archaeological work … As a result of this project, we now have a wealth of additional information, both archaeological and archival. The capacity for learning about local history and archaeology has improved.”

The group found over 4,000 artifacts during the course of the excavation. For the purposes of training and comprehensiveness, they collected all artifacts regardless of apparent age. They ended up with 250 diagnostic artifacts, which help with exact identification and dating.

“We could determine, based on the diagnostic artifacts, that the family had possessed fine pottery and porcelain in the late 19th century, and that they must have had an active metalworking or blacksmithing shop at one time,” said Krotscheck.

Bush Prairie Farm, originally 640 acres of high ground staked out at the tip of Puget Sound, was founded in late 1845 by George Washington Bush, a Pennsylvania-born (1779) freedman’s only son. It wasn’t until nearly ten years after he’d settled that the provisional Washington Territory legislature prevailed upon Congress to grant Bush the title to his homestead. He may have been the first person of color to own land in Northwest Territories.

The group has more to learn—in 2016 they plan to return to the site and finish the extensive dig.

Krotscheck is grateful for the opportunity to share their findings. “In my own professional capacity, I am satisfied that we were able to present archaeology to the public, as well as raise awareness about an important part of early local history … I am happy to have been able to contribute to this relationship with my work.”