The Venable story, much of it locked underground and forgotten for centuries, is the kind of story Independence National Historical Park has started to tell visitors in recent years, largely thanks to archaeology.
"From an archaeological perspective, the Venable lot is the holy grail of African American sites in Philadelphia," said Douglas Mooney, an archaeologist with URS Group.
Mooney has been involved in extensive park excavations in recent years, including the massive dig that preceded construction of the Constitution Center in 2000. Of Venable's buried site, he said, "All indications are that the property is exceptionally well preserved - and it's right out the side door of the NCC, where it's all green grass."
Within a few years of Venable's move, James Oronoko Dexter arrived on the other side of that block, on North Fifth Street, and Israel Burgow took up residence in the middle. All three former slaves helped found St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and were part of an important, growing enclave of free blacks, about 60 of whom lived on the block by 1790. These are the people UCLA historian Gary Nash has called "the founding fathers of black America."
But while the homesites of Dexter and Burgow have been excavated, the modest house where Venable lived for more than half a century has not. Archaeologists say they are not aware of any other early African American homesite occupied by a single family for a longer period of time. They sense treasure.
The Venable homesite is "not pristine," Mooney said. "But even after a later building was put up, there were open backyard ground spaces all around him. We've got . . . original historic ground surfaces all around him."
