Fort Brewerton & Oliver Stevens Blockhouse Museum

Fort Brewerton & Oliver Stevens Blockhouse Museum The Blockhouse Museum holds collections of local artifacts, including native materials. It is overs

Open today for tours and our yard sale 'til 4pm!
06/20/2026

Open today for tours and our yard sale 'til 4pm!

Museum Monday’s Mystery was a fragment of an old spoon that was excavated from the Fort Brewerton earthworks last weeken...
06/19/2026

Museum Monday’s Mystery was a fragment of an old spoon that was excavated from the Fort Brewerton earthworks last weekend. It is made from a copper alloy, probably a zinc copper alloy called latten. This metal has become brittle as the alloy has undergone dezincification. Dezincification is the selective loss of zinc from brass. It's an electrochemical reaction between zinc and some chemicals found in water.
It results in a weak spongy copper layer at the water contact surface.

More on this process here:

https://wieland-chase.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Dezincification-Web-Class-ver-2-12-2020.pdf

Spoons with the reinforcing spinal rib on the back of the bowl are known as rattail spoons. Egg shaped spoon bowls with rat tails were manufactured from around 1710-1740. As such they’re found in many colonial sites, including French and Indian war forts like Fort Brewerton. Although knives show up more in the archaeology here we have one or two other spoon examples. One is a latten spoon that may have been dug up nearby, (it will be a future mystery item if I can solve its secrets). The other is a spoon bowl fragment much like today’s mystery item, although much smaller and has a different reinforcing spinal rib pattern. This is referred to as a fiddleback and is the next style to take over after the rattail in the late 18th century. This spoon is also very thin and appears to be made out of a copper alloy like latten.
So why a copper alloy and not the more common pewter spoon? We certainly do find pewter items, but I believe at a frontier military site like this the soldiers were more often using sturdier, copper alloy and iron utensils, not the easy to make pewter spoons you tend to see at civilian colonial sites. Fort Stanwix has a few examples of both latten and pewter spoon fragments that were found . A pewter spoon handle and iron spoon bowl was excavated in the 1960s here, but these lacked the necessary features to date them.
I hope to see more spoons in future excavations. When they’re this old, I never get tired of finding them.

Today’s Mystery! Guess the recently excavated item fragment from the Museum collections. Comment below what you think ...
06/15/2026

Today’s Mystery! Guess the recently excavated item fragment from the Museum collections. Comment below what you think it was. I will post my answer on Friday!

(Pickings were a bit slim artifact wise in this weekends excavation, so this one’s gonna be a bit easier, most of us still use these every day.)

We have a small yard sale at the Blockhouse. Singer Serger, Yankee t-shirts ... free Christmas plates!
06/13/2026

We have a small yard sale at the Blockhouse. Singer Serger, Yankee t-shirts ... free Christmas plates!

06/13/2026

Saturday's dig is a go at Fort Brewerton.
So is our yard sale! Please Support the Fort?

06/10/2026

We love our volunteers who see a job and take action! Thank you George & Steve Zuk for mowing and trimming the corner on 37&11!

Mike Monica and his crew renovated the gardens at Fort Brewerton, converting overgrown perennials and weeds into attract...
06/08/2026

Mike Monica and his crew renovated the gardens at Fort Brewerton, converting overgrown perennials and weeds into attractive beds. We are so grateful for Monica Enterprises generosity in donating their talents and materials!

Thanks to Monica Enterprises, the Fort Brewerton's gardens are receiving a renovation. We are extremely grateful for you...
06/08/2026

Thanks to Monica Enterprises, the Fort Brewerton's gardens are receiving a renovation. We are extremely grateful for your generous offer to donate your crew and supplies. Stay tuned for before and afters!

Museum Monday’s Mystery was an old set of “book straps”. In the days before backpacks, students would either hold their ...
06/05/2026

Museum Monday’s Mystery was an old set of “book straps”. In the days before backpacks, students would either hold their books loose or bind them up in a pair of leather straps sometimes with a handle. This was not the original purpose for these straps, as they were invented to hold more adult items like sashes, bed rolls, and luggage. Students merely adopted them in mass, likely after seeing another student using it. But in the mid 20th century, as the amount of books used increased and nylon was invented backpacks took over. Originally hiking backpacks were used and in the 1970s, companies began selling them specifically for book bags.

More in this fascinating transition here

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/11/02/445339503/from-book-strap-to-burrito-a-history-of-the-school-backpack

The only thing left to do is uncoil it and see how long it was. This is risky as the old leather could crack, so it must be done slowly, checking it’s flexibility as you unroll it.
It still seems to maintain a fair amount of flexibility, and I think we will store it open like this and not wired together with rusty metal.

It appears to have been donated with a bunch of other coiled up belts without handles, possibly used for the same thing.

Address

Box 392 9 US Route 11
Brewerton, NY
13029

Telephone

(315) 668-8801

Website

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