Leaving titanosaurs aside for the moment...
A
couple
of
times
now, I've featured inventories of National Park Service proboscidean fossils:
mammoths, mastodons, and so forth. One of the records that's been stuck as
questionable is an 1811 report from the area of
Colonial National Historical Park. To quote from the most recent published assessment, in Mead et al. (2020):
“The Williamsburg-area mastodon was first reported in 1811 (Anonymous 1811).
The details vary from report to report, but apparently the bones were found 10
km (6 mi) south (Anonymous 1811) or east (Mitchill 1818) of Williamsburg on
the south bank of the York River. It is unclear where the former location
would be, but the latter is potentially within COLO [Colonial National
Historical Park], in the vicinity of Bellefield Plantation and the mouth of
Indian Field Creek. Anonymous (1811) reported that the site was a few yards
within high water near the home of Gawin Corbin. The fossils include 2 tusks,
2 vertebrae, 1 pelvis, 1 femur, and partial mandibles with 7 associated teeth
(Mitchill 1818). Given the presence of molars, it is surprising that Mitchill
(1818) identified the specimens as mammoth, yet Hay (1923) reported them as a
mastodon (Mammut). Hay (1923) reported that the bones were probably
destroyed in the 1859 fire at the College of William and Mary. Clark and
Miller (1912) refer this specimen to the Pleistocene of the Talbot Formation
(a now-obsolete name)."
I and others have made attempts over the past few years to determine who the
Gavin Corbin in question was and where his property was located, most recently
as part of the
Colonial National Historical Park paleontological inventory
currently being reviewed. The primary issue has been the numerous Corbins who
have lived in this region, including multiple Gawin Corbins. In such a case,
sometimes you have to trust in serendipity, and I can now state that I'm
practically certain the answer is at hand. The man in question is Gawin Lane
Corbin (1778–1821), and the property is the “Kings Creek” plantation, now
within the U.S. Navy's
Cheatham Annex just
north of the Colonial Parkway.
This was the kind of thing where it was helpful to have some experience in
genealogical research. It wasn't enough to have a good candidate for the name;
there also had to be a way to track the location. In this case, "Kings Creek"
has a lengthy history, beginning as "Utimaria" in 1630 and passing through
various hands until being sold to Corbin's father in 1790 (Tyler 1894;
Anonymous 1913). Later the area was known as Penniman, and eventually the
Navy's Cheatham Annex. Importantly for us, we also know that the Ringfield and
Bellefield (or Bellfield, or Belfield) plantations were active in the same
time frame as the fossil discovery, on what is now the NPS side of Kings (or
King’s, or King) Creek. With this knowledge, we can be certain than any
mammoth or mastodon found near the home of Gawin Corbin on the York River
shore was found in what would now be part of the Cheatham Annex, and therefore
near but not within the historical park. (On the other hand, if anyone from
the Annex is reading this, it looks like there's a mammoth or mastodon in your
history.)
Presumably Corbin had some idea of the significance of the find for it to have
been collected in the first place. He was certainly in a position to have been
exposed to discussion of such fossils, having social standing and a college education (William
& Mary alum; Anonymous 1922) at a time when fossils of
mammoths and mastodons held an unusual fascination beyond their scientific
value.
|
Near the mouth of King's Creek, looking north toward Penniman Spit.
|
References
Anonymous. 1811.
Curious discovery [elephant bones from York River, Williamsburg,
Virginia]. Philadelphia Repertory 2:87–88.
Anonymous. 1913.
Notes from the records of York County. William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 22(2):73–89.
Anonymous. 1922.
The Corbin Family (continued). The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 30(4):403–407.
Clark, W. B., and B. L. Miller. 1912.
The physiography and geology of the Coastal Plain province of Virginia. Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin 4:13–222.
Hay, O. P. 1923.
The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the
states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of
longitude 95 degrees. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Publication 322.
Mead, J. I., J. S. Tweet, V. L. Santucci, J. T. Rasic, and S. E. Holte. 2020.
Proboscideans from US National Park Service lands. Eastern Paleontologist 6:1–48.
Mitchill, S. L. 1818. Observations on the geology of North America;
illustrated by the description of various organic remains found in that part
of the World. Pages 319–431 in G. Cuvier.
Essay on the theory of the Earth, with mineralogical notes, and an account
of Cuvier’s geological discoveries, by Professor Jameson. Kirk and Mercein, New York, New York.
Tyler, L. G. 1894.
Notes by the editor. The William and Mary Quarterly 2(4):230–236.
