07/28/08

The Moland House

The Moland House is one of the many Washington’s Headquarters in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  This one is located in Warwick Township in an area called Hartsville.  This site has been part of an archaeology program since 1997.  In the early years, the archaeology uncovered the corner of a brick building that was assumed to be a building which was 8 feet on each side, and used as slave quarters in colonial times.  I scanned this area and  found that the outline was 12 feet by 25 feet and consisted of two rectangles, one four inches within the other.  I also found a 10 foot square next to it.  No one seemed interested at the time and so I let the subject slide.  The next year while working on the site, one of our team members asked if I would look for a rectangle where they had scanned and detected a line.   After we completed our archaeology for the day, I went looking for the rectangle.  I did not find it, but instead found a line that went on for hundreds of feet.  There I also found three other lines running somewhat parallel.  The two inner lines were a nominal 7 feet apart and the two outer lines were one and a half feet out on each side, for a total nominal width of 10 feet.  These lines ran on the south side of the Moland House where a ground penetrating radar scan, conducted years earlier had detected a 10 foot wide path of material.  The scanned lines done with the dowsing rod ran then around the west side of the house and north to the end of the property.  They also ran east for about 100 feet and curved south to the Neshaminy Creek, about 350 yards away. They stopped about 8 feet from the bank of the creek.  In several places there are two lines at walkway width that go from these four lines to four rectangles found through dowsing.  The network is complex.  A professional surveyor was brought in to survey many of the lines and a map was drawn up.  There are many other lines going south on Old York road and with path lines to colonial buildings that are still standing.  I do not know the significance of the four lines that I now call a cart-way.  I can speculate that there was a plank road there at one time, but I am still puzzled as to the reason for the lines.  We have not found a map, as yet, that shows a colonial road in the area that matches the path of the four lines.