Archaeologists in Virginia are uncovering one of colonial America's most lavish displays of opulence: An ornamental garden where a wealthy politician and enslaved gardeners grew exotic plants from around the world. Such plots of land were the 18th-century equivalent of buying a Lamborghini. The garden in Williamsburg belonged to John Custis IV, a tobacco plantation owner who is perhaps best known as the first father-in-law of Martha Washington.
She married George Washington after Custis' son Daniel died. Historians also have been intrigued by the elder Custis' botanical adventures, reports the . And yet this excavation is as much about the people who cultivated the land as it is about Custis.
"The garden may have been Custis' vision, but he wasn't the one doing the work," says Jack Gary, executive director of archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg, which now owns the property. "Everything we see in the ground that's related to the garden is the work of enslaved gardeners, many of whom must have been very skilled." Some finds: In recent years, the museum has boosted efforts to tell a more complete story about the Black Americans who lived in Williamsburg.
It plans to reconstruct one of the nation's oldest Black churches and is restoring what is believed to be the country's oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children..