'Getting into the archaeological game' by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram: Dr Kathleen Gilmore and San Gabriel TX archaeological site

Getting into the archaeological game

by Jeanne Williams

Temple Daily Telegram - May 11, 2009

SAN GABRIEL - In 1967, Dr. Kathleen Gilmore led the premier archaeological expedition at

the 18th-century Spanish mission San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas, aided by interns

from Southern Methodist University and an unlikely staff of volunteers - nine members of

the Rockdale High School football team.

Clift Clark, then a 17-year-old Rockdale High School senior, tackled archaeology with

enthusiasm.

Dr. Gilmore “didn’t tolerate much horseplay so we worked,” Clark said. “She was strict.

You didn’t get out there with a shovel and start digging a hole. You used a trowel. She

had an iron fist over us teenage boys and we minded her.” But the boys admired and

respected the SMU professor described by Clark as “very energetic, very smart, and very

focused. She was probably the first woman I met who was like that. She was different.

When she said something, you knew she meant what she said.”

Dr. Gilmore, dressed in jeans, workshirt and hat, labored side by side with the boys,

and “didn’t mind getting her hands dirty,” Clark said.

Carefully following Dr. Gilmore’s instruction, the youths measured off squares and

meticulously scraped away soil with trowels. At 2 feet down they struck gold. Not real

gold, but shards of dinnerware identified by its distinctive patterns as the type made

in Europe during the 1700s.

“We found a lot of old, broken pottery, broken plates and cups decorated with a blue

color,” said Clark, a Rockdale Alcoa retiree who operates a pipe and gasket business in

downtown Rockdale.

Most memorable to Clark was his discovery of a crucifix hand carved from bone, obviously

intended as a neck charm. Dr. Gilmore was thrilled at the find, he said. The crucifix

obviously was a good luck charm because the dig yielded an even larger find.

“It was amazing,” he said. “We were digging down and all of a sudden the ground changed

color. We started scraping it off, and we realized that a person was buried there. We

found some graves, about 15 plots, anywhere from infants to adults.”

Dr. Gilmore gave the youths a mini-crash course in anthropology, explaining they could

determine whether the skeletons were the remains of an Indian or Spaniard by the

cheekbones, Clark said. One Spaniard had been entombed wearing a fancy blue-beaded sash,

he said.

One eventful day, a Rockdale youth dug into a seam of yellow clay in a row measuring

about 8 inches wide, which revealed to Dr. Gilmore’s team the outline of the mission

wall, Clark said.

For Clark, now 59, the excavation was an adventure that most folks experience only from

the pages of National Geographic. He still thinks about the dig, and remembers Dr.

Gilmore with very kind thoughts. The dig was a dream come true for this Rockdale youth

who respected history primarily because of his impressive ancestry. Clark represents

pure Americana. His maternal forebears arrived in America in 1609, and one branch of the

family was among the original 300 settlers allowed into Texas. Clark also is related to

six U.S. presidents.

Born in San Saba County, but raised in Rockdale, Clark often visited his grandfather’s

property beside the San Saba River, which was littered with perfect bird point

arrowheads and other Indian artifacts. “When I heard about the dig, I jumped at the

chance to get on that thing to see what we could find. It was an experience,” Clark

said.

The excavation yielded a treasure trove of 18th century items. Dr. Gilmore’s expedition

unearthed more than 7,000 Spanish and Indian artifacts. Some are on display in the Milam

County Historical Museum Annex.

The site of the San Francisco Mission was not visible at 20th century ground level, but

landowners had handed down stories of the church site on the hill, said Frank Felton,

75, who inherited the property off FM 908 in the 1950s, and knew from family stories

that a specific hilltop near the San Gabriel River once was the site of the mission San

Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas.

Mexican field hands once declared the mission site to be haunted after digging up a

human skeleton during a fence-building project, said Felton, who asserted he does not

believe in ghosts. Though not particularly enthralled with archaeology, Felton found

time each evening to drop in at the dig and visit with the excavation team. Dr. Gilmore

visited and got to know many of the residents of the area, and mentioned them by name in

her report on the mission excavation.

“That Dr. Gilmore was a pretty good old gal,” Felton said. “She put in a lot of good,

hard work out here,” he said, standing on the hilltop near the San Gabriel River now

marked with a memorial erected by the Roman Catholic Church to honor the San Xavier

Missions.

In the mid 1700s, the Spanish government attempted to colonize this section of

wilderness Texas by establishing three Roman Catholic missions in the San Gabriel area,

the San Francisco, the San Ildefonso and Nuestra Senior de la Candeleria. After a

decade, the missions were relocated because of continuous strife between Spanish

soldiers, priests, colonists and Indians. The settlement was plagued with raids from

unfriendly Indians, as well as a smallpox epidemic, and prolonged drought that dried up

the San Gabriel River. Complications arose when a Spanish soldier murdered a priest, and

settlers were unnerved when an unexplained ball of fire circled the area. The missions

were moved out in 1756, and buildings were burned by hostile Indians.

More than two centuries later, Dr. Gilmore gathered historical documents and accounts,

and arrived at the site ready to explore.

“We were very fortunate at San Francisco. We found an outline of a building, we found

trenches and we found evidence of post-hole molds,” Dr. Gilmore said in a 2006

interview.

Today, Dr. Gilmore, at age 94, is working on a book about the Milam County missions. She

is planning to return later this year with the Texas Historical Commission to explore an

open field off FM 908 in hopes of locating the presidio where the Spanish soldiers were

billeted.

Clark remembers that, while working at the dig, he was thinking about the Indians,

soldiers, priests and families who went about a daily existence of waking, eating,

sleeping, serving God and surviving in a very hostile settlement, and now these people

are gone.

Felton, a farmer and rancher, works around the mission’s hilltop site almost daily, and

has definite plans for the San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas Mission location. “There

are probably a lot of graves out there that haven’t been found,” Felton said, as a stiff

wind whipped the grasses and whispered through the trees. Felton has planted pecan trees

around the Roman Catholic memorial and upon his death will be cremated with instructions

for his family to place the jar of ashes on the site where others were buried more than

two centuries ago.

Photos courtesy of Bill Pierson, Texas Historical Commission and Jeanne Williams

Dr Kathleen Gilmore

Clift Clark
helped
archaelogical excavation
at age 17

Frank Felton

.

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram
Photos by Shirley Williams -
Temple Daily Telegram photographer