Archaeologist completes long-stalled excavation at 1787 mansion in Georgetown

Built in the 1780s, Georgetown’s Halcyon House has a rich history full of tales and mysteries that are a part of DC lore — as well as some that are just being brought to light. The landmark mansion at 3400 Prospect St. NW now houses an incubator program for creative professionals who promote social good, but the roster of past owners includes the first secretary of the Navy, a nephew of Mark Twain, and Georgetown University, which used the sprawling interiors in the 1960s as a student dormitory.

And that’s just a small sampling of its story. In an effort to learn more, the cultural resources management firm Engineering-Sciences Inc. attempted an archaeological excavation in 1985, but the project lost funding and was left unfinished.

Jennifer Porter-Lupu, an archaeology doctoral candidate at Northwestern University who grew up in Bethesda, recently completed the excavation for her dissertation with funding from a grants from the Social Sciences Research Council and the Sexualities Project at Northwestern. She discussed her preliminary findings and hypotheses at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library in a lecture last month on “Unearthing Secret Histories at Georgetown’s Halcyon House,” one of several talks she gave at area libraries to solicit public input on her archaeology project.

The Aug. 21 event hosted by DC Public Library special collections librarian and archivist Jerry A. McCoy drew about a dozen people to the third-floor Peabody Room, which houses an extensive collection of books, artifacts and records that chronicle Georgetown’s history. One of the attendees — Bill Brown, the president of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of DC — reminisced about his father telling “creepy” stories about sneaking into the residence as a teenager, where he found doors that opened to brick walls and staircases that led nowhere.

Others who lived in the home, including a Georgetown University professor, have shared ghost stories throughout the years. Many of them are related to the man who built the brick Georgian home in 1787: Benjamin Stoddert, a Revolutionary War hero and the inaugural secretary of the Navy. In its early years, his house hosted meetings that influenced the entire country and region — including advising President George Washington on the establishment of Washington as the nation’s capital. But it’s a later occupant who piqued Porter-Lupu’s interest: Albert Adsit Clemons — Mark Twain’s nephew, and the Halcyon House’s owner and occupant from 1900 to 1938. Known for his superstitious beliefs, such as asking to be pierced through the heart when he died to ensure he wouldn’t be buried alive, Clemons also contended that he could prolong his life by adding on to the house.

Archaeologists discover history through artifacts, and Clemons’ tenure in Georgetown offered great inspiration for Porter-Lupu’s post-graduate work.

As a cultural resources management archaeologist in the DC area for three years before she started graduate school, she helped excavate sites and process artifacts throughout the mid-Atlantic region. She returned last summer for an internship with city archaeologist Ruth Trocolli at the DC Office of Planning. Trocolli was searching for a graduate student to tackle the Halcyon House project, which she had helped with but didn’t have the resources to finish. So Porter-Lupu took it on.

As a self-described “queer archaeologist,” Porter-Lupu doesn’t hide aspects of her personal identity that inform her focus of study: exploring underrepresented histories, including LGBTQ heritage. Her take on the Halcyon House is that it may have been a queer community space.

Porter-Lupu found evidence in trash buried in the backyard that she says suggests Clemons dressed as a woman. Female lingerie items such as garters, stockings and metal clips from corsets were among the objects found in the dig. She also found evidence that Clemons’ wife rarely stayed at the home.

Since the only people recorded as living in the Halcyon House during this time were Clemons and his male carpenter, Porter-Lupu guesses that one or both of them defied gender norms. Though queer behavior was criminalized at that time, she said, personal journals from the era document homosexuality (especially among men), gender-nonconforming dress, drag and burlesque.

At various times during its nearly two-and-a-half centuries, the Halcyon House provided a focal point for Washington’s social life — including the 1900s. “Drag [performances] and balls are well-known to have occured during this era in many American cities,” Porter-Lupu said.

Some members of the audience at the Georgetown Library challenged Porter-Lupu’s claims. They pointed out, for example, that the lingerie items found in the yard could have come from another woman who visited the home. Porter-Lupu defended her ideas — which she emphasized are just theories at this stage — by citing reports from newspapers that indicated that Clemons and his male carpenter were both somewhat reclusive. She also mentioned that her project involves “community-based participatory research,” meaning that feedback from locals is welcome. To this end, Porter-Lupu asked to talk with Brown at a later date to learn more about his father’s experiences sneaking into the Halcyon House. Overall, the crowd seemed interested in her findings whether they agreed with her hypotheses or not.  

To engage with DC residents before heading back to Chicago for the school year, she hosted several other events last month: another talk on the home’s LGBTQ heritage at the Shepherd Park (Juanita E. Thornton) Neighborhood Library; a discussion about Halcyon House’s enslaved inhabitants at the Shaw (Watha T. Daniel) Neighborhood Library; a lab day at the DC Office of Planning; and a creative writing workshop co-taught with Northwestern University performance scholar Benjamin Zender at the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library. Her plan is to return to DC next summer and to run similar programming throughout the 2019-20 academic year as she continues her engagement with the DC Office of Planning.

Find the Halcyon House Archaeology Project as @halyconarchaeology on Facebook and Instagram for additional details.