Privy tied to Paul Revere excavated
No. 1 if by land, No. 2 if by sea?
Archeologists are excavating what they believe was the site of an outhouse next door to Paul Revere’s home — and the privy, as the colonists politely called their potties, could be flush with artifacts.
People typically dumped trash and household goods in their outhouses. Volunteers with the City of Boston Archaeological Program already have pulled fragments of pottery, bottles and a tobacco pipe from the bricked yard of the Pierce-Hichborn House in the heart of Boston’s North End.
So far, there’s been no sign of mummified human excrement. That would be the telltale evidence of an outhouse at the home once owned by a cousin of Revere, Boston city archeologist Joe Bagley told The Associated Press.
“Paul Revere might well have come over here for dinner and used the bathroom,” Bagley said. “He had 12 kids in his own little house next door. It’s easy to imagine they didn’t stay cramped up in there all the time.”
Last week organizers said on Instagram that they were surprised to discover the outdoor toilet is only three feet deep — half what they expected — but they planned to punch through a concrete bottom apparently added around 1850 to see what might lurk beneath.
The house was built around 1711 next to the Paul Revere House, one of the city’s most prominent historic sites and a huge tourist draw. Archeologists timed their dig to coincide with drainage improvements being made to the property.
Any fossilized unmentionables will be analyzed for seeds or the remains of parasites — clues that could tell scholars more about the colonists’ diet.
Moses Pierce, a glass worker, was the original owner of the house. It was later bought by Nathaniel Hichborn, a boat builder and a cousin of Paul Revere, famed for his midnight ride on April 18, 1775, warning that the British were coming.
Revere’s backup plan — preparations to light either one or two lanterns as signals from the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church — is immortalized in a line in Paul Revere’s Ride, a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: “One if by land, and two if by sea …” The Associated Press