Every day brings something new

Moments like this I wish I had my camera available while I was out on site. I was digging in my garden and as I was flipping soil and chopping up weeds, I hit a rock. Rocks have got to be the worst thing for me to find in the garden. So of course, I say “crap, I hope this isn’t a brick.”

The thing about finding bricks in my garden is that there is the fear that I will find something historically significant and my garden may suddenly become a site for archaeology. Sure that can be exciting but so is planting what would have been the supplement to the slave diet. Well wouldn’t you know…it is a brick. And it’s not just any brick. It is an original brick, one that was slave made. This brick was so fantastic looking (which is why I really wish I took a picture of it before it got hauled off to collections) and it had *wait for it* two, count ’em, TWO indentations that looked a lot like hand prints. I put my fingers in them and it’s almost as if I was making the brick. That experience was so amazing. There are some occasions where we will find bricks that may have a thumb print, or some marking on it where you know it was made by the slave who created the brick, but never had I found something like this that immediately connected me to the lives of those I talk about on a regular basis. Completely awesome!

Fortunately our Collections Manager was there and she took the brick to be placed with its partners that have been found throughout the site and serve as reminders to us that while the slaves themselves are gone, their work and their experience will always be around to remind us to be thankful for what we have available to us today and to remember that they were people who like us, just tried to make it one day at a time.

Update 3/13/2011 photo of the brick! Thanks to Latasha Richards for this!

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2 Responses

  1. Andres says:

    What will it take for you to have a camera on site? I would have loved to seen the brick.

  2. admin says:

    Andres, spoke to our collections manager and she sent 2 images of the brick. Hard to make out the hand prints but the indentations are there

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