The tabulation of the portable artifacts by Robert Bonnage, the site archaeologist, is not complete, but the total of the preliminary count is nearly 80,000. More important than the number has been the wide variety, and the most interesting and informative of these, supplemented by graphics, will tell the story of the archaeological search and of the men of Fort McIntosh in a permanent display in the community room of the Beaver Memorial Library.
These range from the flint tools of an Indian culture hundreds of years before the troops arrived at Fort McIntosh to those of the relatively highstyle living enjoyed by the officers of the garrison when it was the headquarters of our first peacetime army.
Of armaments there are cannon balls, grenades, grapeshot, musket, rifle and pistol balls, buckshot, flints, musket, pistol and rifle parts, bayonets, sword or bayonet scabbard tips, pike points, pike or flagstaff butt cones, bullet molds, leather patches, and form hawks.
In the construction items are hand-wrought iron nails by the thousands, single nails, tacks, spikes, axeheads, chisels, wooden pegs, spades, hatchets, window glass, bricks made on the site, hinges, doorpulls and hasps, and whetstones.
Ceramics and glassware range from the common redware used by the troops and Indians to whiteware, and delft used by the officers. There are fragments of apothecary, wine, rum bottles, and stems of champagne glasses. Kitchen and dining utensils include knives, forks, spoons, iron pots, tin cups, bucket bails, canteens and lamphooks.
Clothing items are limited to those of bone and metal and includebuttons made of deerbone along with the bones from which they were cut, buttons of silver, brass, pewter, steel and iron, buttons with the USA insignia, probably belonging to the 1st Regiment. There are waist buckles, knee buckles, stock buckles, and iron creepers attached to the shoe for marching on ice.
Personal gear include lead pencils, penknives, jewsharps, clay pipe stems and bowls, needles, spectacle frames, thimbles, coins, rings, and combs.