Nita Thurman

History can be found in memoirs, journals and even legend, but it also can sometimes appear in tangible bits and pieces left behind in the earth.

At least three times in the recent past, small items have been found under the earth at the Civic Center Park, now the Quakertown Park, that hint of the Quakertown community that once thrived there.

The city of Denton bought the property in the early 1920s. Houses and buildings were de­molished or moved and the area graded to prepare the park.

In the summer of 1990, workers digging new utility ditches southeast of the Senior Center parking lot encountered what appeared to be remains of the former African-American community.

They called in archeologists from the University of North Texas to investigate the site. They found a section of buried wall or perhaps the edge of a cistern, remnants of wooden barrels, and a midden, or rubble heap, that was probably created when the community was destroyed in the 1920s.

In the rubble were bones, bottle and glass fragments, ceramic shards and metal scraps, as well as some household and personal items.

The artifacts were not considered of sufficient density to warrant more excavations, so the sites were covered and the ditch work completed.

In 1999, archeologists revisited the site when artifacts were uncovered while the Senior Cen­ter parking lot was being expanded.

The land was being graded to 12 inches below the surface, and a number of items showed up in the pile of backfill.

Excavation found a lot of broken glass in a variety of colors, as well as ceramics shards and other rubble.

Again, it was decided that there were not enough artifacts to warrant continuing excavation.

The next discovery was a little more dramatic.

While the park was being prepared for the 2003 Arts & Jazz Festival, a city worker driving across the park literally fell into a hole that opened up underneath him in what was believed to be firm ground. He had uncovered a well once used by Quakertown families that apparently had been sealed with a wooden cover that had rotted and given way.

Parks personnel covered the hole with a heavy metal plate for protection until the Arts & Jazz Festival was over. This time, a professional archeologist from Pre­witt & Company in Austin, Doug Boyd, came to Denton to explore the new site.

What he found was a rock-lined well filled with debris until it was only about 6 feet deep. The well was about 30 feet in diameter, a large size for a one-family well, so Mr. Boyd theorized it could have served several families.

As he continued to dig down into the well, Mr. Boyd found pieces of early Acme bricks, metal fragments, glass fragments imprinted with the name of the Alliance Ice Co. that once was located in Denton. He also found a small brass decorative brooch that probably once adorned a woman’s collar.

There were metal parts, a piece of harness strap, bones from animals butchered for meat and other debris.

Most of the artifacts pulled from the well probably were deposited there during park construction in 1922 and 1923, when bulldozers were leveling the land and pushed debris into the open well, Mr. Boyd theorized.

He was forced to stop when he hit water at about 11 feet, although he estimated the well was 2 or 3 feet deeper. Probing indicated other large objects in the water but there was no way to determine what they were.

Once again, there were bits and pieces found, and more hints that there are still hidden items to be unearthed. Who knows what may still be hidden.

NITA THURMAN can be reached at nitathur@aol.com .