Shepard Homestead Excavation in Kittery

The homestead of one of my earliest Maine ancestors, John Shepard of Kittery, was excavated in spring 2002 as a joint project of the History Department of Salem State College and the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum. A map drawn in the 17th century helped in the excavation.

William Godsoe had drafted a map of this specific area in 1689. The map shows Shepard’s house, barn, an outbuilding and the orchard, as well as the home of his neighbor, Paul Williams.

The pictorial and archaeological evidence of the Shepard outbuildings is extremely important, for it gives a chance to closely study not just a seventeenth-century home, but the entire farm complex. While much work has been done on seventeenth-century farm out buildings in Virginia and Maryland, the Shepard site is the first site in Maine where outbuildings have been found.