Digging with Margaret
Robert Mazrim
2024
I started digging with Margaret at the site of Fort de Chartres in the fall of 2011, about seven years after I met her. When we first met, at a conference on colonial studies across the river at Ste. Genevieve, we were seated next to each but hadn’t been introduced. I knew who she was of course. I was familiar with her work and had seen her around. At a break, as I was about to introduce myself, I turned to find her immediately surrounded by a retinue of colleagues, fans, and well-wishers. She was mobbed.
Margaret carried herself almost regally under such circumstances. She was always utterly poised and polite, but at the same time reserved and with a certain countenance that suggested she would be formidable at the poker table. She didn’t suffer fools, but she was also utterly patient and generous with her time and her deep knowledge of a particular corner of Illinois history that she carried with her for over 50 years.
When the crowd thinned out, we had a quiet conversation, and shortly afterward we hopped into my truck, crossed the river on the Modoc ferry, and proceeded to the village of Prairie du Rocher – her home, and also the site of a huge 18th century French dwelling that she had been excavating. Down in the test units, among piles of limestone rubble and the humming of cicadas, we started talking shop. The conversation ended only a couple of months ago, when she passed.
Margaret had a long personal history with French colonial archaeology in Illinois. After leaving college, she immersed herself in the world of the Illinois Tribe, beginning with her critical work at the Zimmerman site – the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia during the 1600s. While a number of crews have conducted excavations there, her work produced our most robust picture of life at that important place. She spent three seasons working along the Illinois River at that site, with her young son exploring the backdirt piles by her side. The minute she was done there, she headed south to Randolph County to excavate a large portion of the fortified 18th century home of the Michigamea Tribe of the Illinois. That research represents one of the most complete pictures of an 18th century Indigenous village in the region. At the same time, the State began asking her to have a look at the grounds of the reconstructed fort nearby. She was knee-deep in the 18th century for years. Margaret was quickly becoming known as one of the few got-to people to ask about the archaeology of what was still a poorly understood era in Illinois history. She was also becoming a well-liked local in southwestern Illinois, the heart of the old French colonial district. The locals knew her and respected her. That’s hard to achieve in this line of work.
So, fast forward to 2011. We were at the site of the third incarnation of Fort de Chartres, built in 1732. There had been some confusion about the site, and what it really represented. Margaret hoped to first to locate a section of the stockade wall of the fort. There were old written records of constant repair and rebuilding of the walls, and also of the general depth of the trenches that supported those vertical log walls. Within two days, she got we wanted - we uncovered a section of a wide trench of unknown depth. She told me “it needs to be just over three feet deep”. A day later, we were both standing in the bottom of a three-foot-deep trench. And to her delight, the cross section of the trench showed clear signs of rebuilding – just like she had hoped we would see.
We also stared finding artifacts. Lots of them. Most went into plastic bags, but fragments of animal bone tend to go into aluminum foil. My toolbox was out of foil – but Margaret brought out a roll of this old, unusually thick stuff. She explained that it was the remnant of a big roll that she had used while working in the reconstructed stone fort nearly 40 years earlier. After all of those years, she was still carrying around her “fort foil”, so we used it to preserve bits of this fort too. She was amused, as was I. I kept a piece back, framed it, and gave it to her for Christmas.
Margaret also spent years reading 18th century legal documents from the colony, once stored at the fort and now filed away at a nearby county courthouse. Margaret had been working to resurrect a map of the village of Chartres, the administrative capital of the Illinois Country located next to the stone fort. Its remains were washed away during the 18th century. And as important as the place was - basically “New Orleans north” - we’ve yet to find a single map of its layout. So, Margaret dove into hundreds of deed records and gradually pieced together each lot and each street, figuring out the layout of the village and who lived next to who at any given time. I’ve never seen anybody even attempt such a project based simply on scant 18th century deed records. But she figured it out, and she presented it in the last book that she wrote, published in 2020.
Anyway, as she was working on this, she had all these little pieces of paper that each represented a particular lot at a particular time. I called them her trading cards. And she would arrange them across this huge piece of black felt that she laid on her kitchen table as she worked. As she figured out which lot belonged where, she would pin it down and move forward. Always rearranging and adjusting. After a few years, it looked like a quilt, decorated in an abstract checkered design that actually reflected an old French village. And it was also covered in cat hair, as her cats would lounge on it while she worked on it at night at her kitchen table. Margaret’s Village Quilt, complete with cat hair, still hangs in our office today.
Margaret had a knack for 18th century family names and histories, and also for divining the personalities of people as they are reflected in the old notarial and church records. I once mentioned a site near a piece of ground owned by a prominent villager called Hebert. There was some issue with other lots that he owned, or how he had acquired or dispensed with them - I can’t really remember. Anyway, she turned to me, rolled her eyes a bit, and said well, you know Hebert… Well, no, I didn’t. But she knew him anyway, and it was a delight to behold.
Margaret was a pioneer archaeologist, a tireless and thorough researcher, a good citizen, a good neighbor, and a devout member of her church. She was also a dear friend. Margaret’s work will continue to live on, and she will be missed.
