Fort Vancouver’s lost schoolhouses found: what a July 2022 dig turned up

A fragment of a slate writing tablet and some slate pencils were the clues that gave the Fort Vancouver schoolhouse away. In July 2022 a team of National Park Service (NPS) and university archaeologists and students located evidence of the Hudson's Bay Company's schoolhouses at Fort Vancouver, a National Historic Site. The dig was part of the Public Archaeology Field School, a long-running partnership of the NPS, Portland State University and Washington State University Vancouver that teaches students field and laboratory methods. Because the site was open to the public, the team talked with hundreds of visitors as they worked.

NPS photo: results of the ground penetrating radar survey done before digging, which hinted where artifacts might lie underground.

Where they dug

Washington State University archaeologists first surveyed the area with ground penetrating radar. Using the results and historical maps, the team placed two excavation blocks at the first schoolhouse and three at the "new schoolhouses".

The first schoolhouse. Inside the fort stockade, later known as the Owyhee Church, it was used in the 1830s and 1840s. The team recovered square nails, window glass, English bricks and mortar made from Hawaiian coral. Other finds pointed to daily life: Hudson's Bay Company-era transferprint ceramics, Chinese export porcelain and hand-painted earthenwares, lead shot, animal bone, bottle glass and a metal awl for leatherwork. Personal objects included buttons, beads, clay pipe fragments, pieces of at least two snuff bottles and a seashell. The slate tablet fragment and slate pencils were the clear sign of a school.

The new schoolhouses. North of the stockade, the Hudson's Bay Company built two schoolhouses around 1844. In 1849 the US Army rented the buildings as a barracks and a storehouse. One of three excavation blocks there found the western schoolhouse, including the remains of a wooden footing, along with square nails, English brick, window glass, transferprint fragments, clay pipes, bottle glass, a blue glass bead and an early US Army slate pencil.

NPS photo: field school students begin excavating at the 1844 new schoolhouses.

Sharing the work

The field school makes its dig sites open to the public and runs a Kids Dig program for children aged 8 to 12 on three Saturdays, led by park rangers and students. Children take part in a mock excavation and talk about what they find and what it might say about the fort's history. More than 100 children took part, and each left with a "Junior Archaeologist" certificate after sharing a favorite artifact.

NPS photo: a recovered ceramic fragment in its labelled bag. The artifacts will join the site's museum collection and inform future educational programs.

The dig relocated the schoolhouses, and the artifacts will be analyzed and interpreted to show more about daily life and schooling at the site.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, "Rediscovering the Fort Vancouver School" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/2022fieldschool.htm), by Katie Wynia, archaeological research assistant; a photograph showing identifiable people is left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.