60 for 60: Durham Tech sponsored archaeological dig in 1981 to study Black history at Somerset Place

In celebration of Durham Technical Community College’s 60th anniversary, the College is publishing 60 for 60 – a storytelling campaign that highlights the people, places, and events that have progressed and shaped the College’s six decades of impact. To view more 60 for 60 stories, visit www.durhamtech.edu/60for60. 

In the summer of 1981, then Durham Technical Institute sponsored an archaeological field school to study Somerset Place’s enslaved community and early history. It was the first archaeological project at Somerset Place to focus on uncovering Black history. Students uncovered two unknown buildings along the historic shoreline of Lake Phelps and found thousands of artifacts.

Somerset Place is located in Creswell, NC and offers a comprehensive and realistic view of 19th-century life on a large North Carolina plantation. Originally, this unusual plantation included more than 100,000 densely wooded, swampy acres bordering the five-by-eight mile Lake Phelps, in Washington County. During its 80 years as an active plantation (1785-1865), hundreds of acres were converted into high yielding fields of rice, corn, oats, wheat, beans, peas, and flax; sophisticated sawmills turned out thousands of feet of lumber. By 1865, Somerset Place was one of the upper South's largest plantations.

Video and history by Somerset Place and North Carolina Historic Sites.