The Archaeology of The Old First Church

The Old First Church, located on Kings Highway in the Village section of Middletown, is a familiar landmark to anyone who passes through the center of town. 

The present structure, built in 1832, is actually the third church used by the congregation since its organization in the 17th century. 

A previous structure, built circa 1735, existed within the footprint of the present-day structure. 

The location of the earliest meetinghouse built 1668/1688, however, had been the source of confusion over the years, as early histories put it in three different locations.

Beginning in 1995, an archaeological study was undertaken to try and determine which, if any, of the three locations was the original site of the First Baptist Church in New Jersey.  

That first structure was replaced in 1735 because, as one historian notes, “the timbers were rotten and therefore old.”  

Various early histories placed the first meetinghouse alternately on the property of John Stout, John Bowne, or the present-day church property.  

Of the three aforementioned sites, the documentary evidence pointed to the John Stout property and the present-day lot of the Old First Church as being the most logical locations for the original meetinghouse. 

Another location, the John Bowne house, was not surveyed at all.  This house, which is still in existence, was precluded as a possible location for the meetinghouse because of its age.  

Unconfirmed sources assign the Bowne house a seventeenth-century construction date, although architectural historians place the likely date as circa 1720. 

 Using the 1720 date as a guide, the house would have already been standing 15 to 20 years before the original meetinghouse was purported to have been torn down.  

A second Bowne house, believed to have been nearly 250 years old, burned in 1906. 

The excavation of the John Stout property on Kings Highway, which is currently occupied by the Old Presbyterian Burying Ground, yielded no evidence of a structure or any 17th-century artifacts.  

Excavations at the Old First Church, however, were quite different.  Areas in the rear, side and front yards of the church building were surveyed.  The most productive excavations, though, came from the dirt floor beneath the church.

A total of three, artifact-rich strata (soil layers) were identified in the church basement including the surface layer, each attributable to the time period for one of the church structures.   

The surface layer contained a large number of artifacts related to the construction and subsequent use of the present day structure built in 1832.  Most notable among these was a man’s leather boot.   

According to June Swann of the Northampton Museum in England, the shoe was typical of work boots worn during the first quarter of the 19th century, and was heavily worn, having shown evidence of numerous repairs to the soles.  

Other artifacts from the surface of the dirt floor include a pyramid-shaped glass ink bottle dated circa 1850, several “strap-shouldered” whiskey bottles dated circa 1870, and a remarkably well-preserved concert ticket dated October 7, 1908.  

The first subsurface layer contained 18th-century artifacts that were clearly associated with the second church structure built circa 1735.  Among these were a number of dropped and pulled handwrought nails. 

 “Dropped” nails typically occur during the building of a structure.  “Pulled” nails, characterized by a gentle arc, usually result from a building that is being dismantled.  These suggest that this layer encompassed both the building and dismantling of a building that only contained handwrought nails.  

Other artifacts of note from this stratum include an 1824 U.S. Large Cent, three brass straight pins with wrapped heads, several clay pipe stems and two dropped musket balls.   

The musket balls measured .69-inches in diameter, which was the standard caliber for use with a British Brown Bess musket during the Revolutionary War.  These were likely deposited shortly after the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778, when the British Army took over and used the church as a hospital/barracks during their retreat to Sandy Hook.

The second subsurface stratum produced critical evidence for the existence of the first 17th-century meetinghouse at this location.  Most notable were several “clinched” nails.  

Clinching occurs when a nail tip is bent into a ninety degree angle to provide a more secure grip to a floorboard, or other similar element.  It will typically be found intact only when a structure has burned or has deteriorated, thus the nail is deposited without being straightened.  

The first meetinghouse, according to historical records, was replaced because the building was deteriorating.  Other significant artifacts include several fragments of architectural wood directly overlying fragments of crown window glass.   

This wood was radiocarbon dated to 1585 A.D. +/-  50 years, meaning that the youngest the wood could be is 1635, a full 33 years prior to the earliest proposed date for the first meetinghouse.  This suggests that at least some of the wood used in the first structure was salvaged from another building that was already over three decades old.   

Ceramics yielded by this stratum include glazed redware (1650-1850) and English Slipware (1670-1795), both of which fall within the time period of the first meetinghouse (1668/1688-1735).

The excavation at the Old First Church was a textbook example of how valuable historical archaeology can be in correcting or clarifying the written record.   

Evidence found at the site indicates that the first Baptist meetinghouse was in fact, located on the site of the present-day church.   

In addition, the antiquity of the recovered architectural wood suggests that the building may have been built in the very first years after Middletown’s founding in 1664.  

The British musket balls recovered from the church basement are also a sobering reminder of how people lived their daily lives in the midst of a war between a fledgling nation and a world superpower that was literally fought right at their doorstep.  

The Old First Church continues to stand today as an important reminder of the role religious freedom played in the early part of our history and the formation of the country.