Near this photo provided by John Crawmer, Jane C. Skinner excavates post holes at the base of a stockade trench in York, Pennsylvania on October 27, 2022. AP/John Crawmer
This week, according to researchers, the location of a prison camp in York, Pennsylvania that kept British prisoners for nearly two years during the American Revolutionary War was identified by the discovery of stockade remnants.
It was believed that Camp Security was situated on land obtained by the local government about a decade ago. Monday, a team of archaeologists uncovered what they believe to be the prison camp’s perimeter security barrier.
During the war, the camp housed almost one thousand English, Scottish, and Canadian privates and noncommissioned officers for 22 months, beginning with a group of prisoners who arrived in 1781, four years after their capitulation at Saratoga, New York. The following year, there were approximately 1,200 men and hundreds of women and children at the camp.
Fieldwork at the site, which also includes the lower-security Camp Indulgence, has been ongoing for decades, but the exact location of Camp Security – where prisoners from the Battle of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781 were held – was unknown until a pattern of post holes in a one-foot-deep trench was discovered.
Carol Tanzola, president of Friends of Camp Security, led fundraising efforts for the project. “This has been a lengthy process, and to finally see it come to completion, or at least know you’re not crazy, is fantastic,” she said.
In 2020, around 28 acres will be tilled for metal detection and surface collection of artifacts, according to the chief archaeologist, John Crawmer. This narrowed the search area to approximately 8 acres, where last year lengthy exploratory trenches were constructed.
Crawmer stated that these trenches enabled the researchers locate post holes, which led to a pattern of holes and a stockade trench that matched other 18th-century military sites.
Next spring, Crawmer and other experts want to ascertain the stockade’s exact dimensions and conduct an intensive search for artifacts within and around it.
“Was it circular or square? What was on the inside and the outside?” Crawmer said. “As we do so, we will begin discovering 18th-century antiquities in the rubbish pits. We will be able to begin addressing questions regarding where individuals slept, where they lived, where they discarded trash, and where the privies are.”
There is evidence, according to Crawmer, that the vertical posts that constituted the security stockade were not in the ground for very long and were maybe dug up and reused when the camp disbanded in 1783.
According to a contemporaneous account of camp life by a British surgeon’s companion, “camp fever” may have killed several captives, and a list of Camp Security inmates was located in the British National Archives. No human remains were discovered on the site.
A 1979 archaeological investigation of a small area of the site yielded buckles, buttons, and other artifacts associated with British soldiers of the era, confirming local legends of the general location of Camp Security and Camp Indulgence. This investigation also uncovered 20 coins and 605 straight pins that may have been used to weave lace by inmates.