Initial Testing of the Reported Site of Spring Place Mission Church Murray County, Georgia

The Moravian mission at Spring Place was established soon after the beginning of the 19th Century. The Cherokees served by the mission were interested in obtaining instruction in language and other skills that would help them in dealing with the recently established American culture. The mission was in existence for only three decades until the missionaries were expelled by the Georgia government prior to the forced removal of the Cherokees from the area. During its active period, the mission grew to include gardens, orchards and fields, houses, and several outbuildings. Some of the activities of the mission can be inferred from the labels on the features shown on a Moravian map (Figure 1): houses, workshop, barn and stable, kitchen building, chicken house, kiln for drying peaches, neatly arranged gardens (for vegetables, I assume), with a separate smaller garden for flowers, physics, and a plant nursery. It would be interesting to learn what kinds of plants were grown for preparation of "physics", and how much influence traditional Cherokee medicine had on the selection of plants. Another map of the mission depicts beehives and a shed for storing ashes (if I read it correctly). This would be reasonable, as ash was used in several activities, including soap making, as a soil nutrient and in processing several foods. A building that served as a both a church and school was built and a cemetery was established near the orchards. The first recorded burial was in the fall of 1812. Individuals laid to rest in the cemetery included African, European, and Indian members of the mission community, including a Principal Chief of the Cherokees. The location of the cemetery had been lost sometime during the more than 160 years since the Cherokee removal. The historical map shown in Figure 1, drawn by one of the Moravians who had been at Spring Place, was used to approximately locate the cemetery by reference to the spring and other landscape features. The location of the cemetery was confirmed by a DNR-sponsored remote sensing survey in 2000, and the cemetery tract was subsequently donated to the state and is now managed by the staff of the Vann House State Historic Site. After the location of the cemetery was confirmed, it became possible to relate the cemetery and spring locations to other buildings and features of the mission. The lane shown on the historical map was identified, and a section of the old Federal Road was located. The Moravian church is shown on the map as being across the lane directly west of the cemetery. Vann House staff obtained permission from the landowner for DNR archaeologists to investigate the probable site of the church and school building. This was more recently the site of a barn that has been removed, so some disturbance of the area was anticipated. The goals of the archaeological investigation were to determine whether artifacts or features dating to the Moravian occupation were present and to determine to what extent the site had been disturbed.