Berlin High School senior Elizabeth Brown participates in an archeological… (BRAD HORRIGAN, Hartford…)
MIDDLETOWN — — On the edge of the Wesleyan University campus in the area of Cross Street, Vine Street and Knowles Avenue, there was once a planned African American community that had ties to the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement.
A group of volunteers and Wesleyan students led by Archaeology Professor Sarah Croucher started excavating at the Beman Triangle site in April of 2012, and has resumed digging after the end of the spring semester.
The site will be open to the public on Saturday from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. for anyone interested in learning more about the project or getting involved.
"We're still relatively early in terms of the excavation," Croucher said in an interview Thursday. "We'll probably have to be here for a few more years and keep developing an understanding of what's going on at each of the houses. It feels as though we're still figuring things out and discovering new material that was totally unexpected and leads us in a new direction."
Croucher said recent excavation suggests that some residents in the Beman Triangle were making their own medication and practicing some type of professional pharmacy.
"Clearly in the 1880s someone was manufacturing medicine in one of the houses, so that turned up a lot of glassware," Croucher said. The health care clues include small glass bottles and syringes and what appears to be antiseptic bottles, she said.
The five-acre property was established by Leverett Beman, a shoemaker who wanted to develop a supportive African American community. Once Beman purchased, divided and moved onto the land in 1847, members of the AME Zion Church built and moved into 17 other homes in the area.
Beman was the son of the first pastor of the original Cross Street AME Zion Church – which was founded in 1830, just before Wesleyan was founded in 1831. Croucher said that original church is located under a roadway on what is now the Wesleyan campus.
The church became a central part of the community, and residents thrived socially and economically despite ongoing racism.
This landmark is the first known residential subdivision in the state to have been laid out by a free black man for black homeowners, according to the Connecticut Freedom Trail website.
"We are continuing to work through this and figure out the sequence of the houses," Croucher said. Much of the research on the site is exploring "how faith shaped life during the 19th century for residents of the triangle," she said.
An exhibit on the Beman Triangle has been on display at the Middlesex County Historical Society on Main Street, and will be there another week before moving to Russell Library on Broad Street starting on July 1.