Make Way for Tomorrow

"I thank God for the archaeologists," he said, adding that if they had not taken the time to examine the site, it would have been paved over, gone without a trace.

He would have missed this chance to visualize his great-great-grandmother living here, praying for her family, "for descendants she had never seen." For him.

"This shows you aren't here by mistake," he said. "That you aren't just passing through, That you have a purpose on this planet."

The intercounty connector project is advancing, despite five decades of debate and delay, and ongoing appeals by opponents who are fighting the project on environmental grounds. Advocates say the road is vital to the state's economy.

Officials say it would not be feasible to save what is left of the Jackson homestead site after the researchers finish their work. The U.S. Route 29 interchange for the highway is due to be constructed on the property.

"This site will definitely be paved over," Schablitsky said. It is not the only archaeological site that lies in the path of the six-lane road. In November, she and other researchers conducted a tour of an area off Georgia Avenue where Native Americans gathered quartz and made tools 5,000 years ago. The researchers say what is important about such sites is the information they contain.

The artifacts from the Jackson homestead will be processed, analyzed and conserved. Highway administration archaeologists will be compiling the data from the site for a paper to be presented at a 2009 historical archaeology conference in Toronto. Displays at schools and local museums are also planned. Eventually, the artifact collection will be placed at the Jefferson Patterson Museum in Southern Maryland, the state repository for all artifacts.

Seated under the trees yesterday, Spencer Jackson declined to comment on the paving of the site, but said, wistfully, that it might be good to at least mark the spot. As he and other descendants prepared to leave, researchers offered them smooth river stones from the foundation of Jackson's house to take home with them.

Bonita Lee Bishop, 44, of Bowie, a great-great-great-granddaughter, chose a heavy stone that seemed to bear iridescent scars from the fire. Holding the stone, she said she was very grateful to have been to visit the homestead.

"It's wonderful," she said, looking around her in the woods, "to know you are from here."