A peek into Old Town lore
Not a trace, so far, of Yankee Jim, neither spectral nor tangible.
Even though the ghost of James Robinson — convicted of grand larceny and hanged in 1852 in Old Town on the site where the Whaley House stands — is the most famous of several spirits said to haunt the historic house, the archaeological dig under way on the property is not really looking for evidence of Robinson or his phantom.
But the four-year effort led by San Diego State University professor Seth W. Mallios has turned up more than 60,000 artifacts from the well behind the house, and more from two other locations on the property.
“It’s this great timeline of the way life was lived here from the 1940s back to the 1850s,” said Mallios, whose youthful enthusiasm complements his sterling credentials. “There are toys, kitchen items, toiletries all in this one spot, on top of each other. It’s rare that you find that kind of continuity. That’s one of the things I’m most excited about.”
Thomas Whaley was a forty-niner, leaving his wealthy New York merchant family for the California Gold Rush. He started construction in 1856 on his Greek revival home on what is now San Diego Avenue.
In addition to being home to Whaley and his descendants, portions of the building — the first brick structure in San Diego — also served at times as the county courthouse, a theater, a granary and Whaley’s general store.
In 2007, the county of San Diego, which now owns the property, and the Save Our Heritage Organisation, which operates the Whaley House as a museum, asked Mallios, chairman of SDSU’s anthropology department, to conduct an archaeological survey and excavation of the site.
It was a logical next step for Mallios, 38, who earned his doctorate at the University of Virginia and lectured at the College of William & Mary while working on the Jamestown Rediscovery Project, working his way up from volunteer to site supervisor before leaving in 2001.
The death of a treasured academic adviser persuaded Mallios to seek a permanent teaching job.
“As much as I like finding stuff, I felt like I had to balance digging with teaching,” he said.
He landed a job as an associate professor at SDSU, and soon he and his students undertook the San Diego Gravestone Project, inventorying nearly 140 cemeteries in the county, including dozens no longer visible.
“With me being new to the area, that was a great way to learn about San Diego County,” Mallios said.
Next he led a dig at the Nate Harrison cabin on Palomar Mountain. Harrison was the first black homesteader in the county.
“We called him,” said Bruce Coons, executive director of SOHO. “They were already doing historical archaeology in the region, like the Nathaniel Harrison cabin. We were really excited they were interested in doing some field work.”
The first thing Mallios and his students did at the Whaley House was drag ground-penetrating radar back and forth across the ground behind buildings. Even four years later, the professor exudes excitement as he eagerly plugs a thumb drive into his laptop and shows a visitor the subsurface “anomalies” turned up by the radar indicating the location of the well, a trash pit outside the kitchen and the eight-seat privy. “The Cadillac of privies,” Mallios said.
Each summer, Mallios has led two four-week field schools on the project with a crew of about a dozen mostly undergraduates. The rest of the year is spent cleaning the artifacts, inventorying them on computer and writing an annual report.
“This site gives the students an opportunity to do a little bit of everything,” Mallios said. “It’s so fun to dig here. It’s very rare to be in an area that had so much political change in such a short period — four cultures in 79 years.
“Before 1769, this was Kumeyaay territory. Then it was ruled by the Spanish, then the Mexicans, then by 1848-49, the U.S.”
“It’s great,” said cultural anthropology student Mustafa Alimi, shortly after finding an animal bone fragment and showing it to site supervisor Jamie Lennox. “One of the main reasons I did the field school was to see whether I want to pursue anthropology. So far, it looks like I made the right decision.”
Alimi, a native of Afghanistan, said the most interesting thing he has found so far is a .22-caliber shell casing, but one that the team unfortunately could not date.
A key feature of the project is that it is public archaeology. Visitors to Old Town can stand within inches of the students as they dig the trash pit or climb out of the well, excavated down to about 23 feet so far.
“Instead of keeping people out, we do the opposite,” Mallios said. “It’s my philosophy. It came from my time at Jamestown.”
On a recent afternoon, Elisha Page, 9, studied a piece of abalone shell that Natalie Brodie had just sifted from moist soil from the well.
“It’s pretty cool that you can have a piece of history in front of you like that,” Mallios said.
As for traces of Yankee Jim or any fellow specters: “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Mallios said. “But we took a group photo at the end of the first field school, and when you look at the photo there is a white orb that is hanging up behind us. It was very unsettling. I can’t explain it.
“I haven’t seen ghosts, but after I saw the orb, I am much more open-minded.”
Pat Flynn: (619) 293-2083; firstname.lastname@example.org