Remembering the women of vine street: Archaeology and historic preservation of an urban landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Abstract

This chapter analyzes a gendered landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, based on our excavation of a property once owned by a free African-American woman, Lydia Hamilton Smith, who was the housekeeper of Thaddeus Stevens, an abolitionist and leading congressman during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. Stevens and Smith were only the most famous residents of the property; in this chapter we examine this property as an example of a microcosmic landscape through which we interpret changes in the social and physical landscape of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, over time. Our focus is on an urban houselot, located at the corner of Queen and Vine Streets in Lancaster, known locally as Lot 134. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.