Archaeologists detail 30-year effort to reconstruct and interpret Saint Mary's City chapel

An archaeologist with Historic Saint Mary's City described a decades‑long project to reconstruct a seventeenth‑century Jesuit chapel at Saint Mary's City and to document the burials and material culture found beneath and around the foundation. The lecture, part of a St. Mary's County Historic Preservation Commission program, summarized fieldwork begun in 1988 and earlier excavations and set out how the site will be interpreted for visitors.

The presenter said archaeologists uncovered the chapel's brick foundation and measured it at roughly 57 feet wide by 54 feet deep, with a construction trench about 5 feet deep and walls approximately 3 feet thick. Using dimensions and comparative colonial examples, the team estimated the original building may have stood about 20 feet tall. "It's complicated," the presenter said of reconstructing the chapel from fragmentary evidence.

The project drew on earlier fieldwork by Henry Chandlee Foreman, who exposed portions of a cruciform foundation in 1938. Beginning in 1988 Historic Saint Mary's City ran a long‑term field school, excavating a series…