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CMW member #87
Archaeologist who unearthed history of early American wars dies
Professor David Starbuck dies at 71
CHESTERTOWN – David Starbuck spent his life digging up the past.
The archaeologist, professor and author of 22 books, Starbuck unearthed artifacts at forts and battlefields in New York and Shaker villages in New Hampshire. With just a mason's trowel and his bare hands, he discovered everything from bones to buttons that informed historians' understanding of early America.
"You can build a whole world from fragments," he once told a reporter.
Sadly, Starbuck's digging days ended on Sunday evening. The lifelong Chestertown resident died at age 71 after an 18-month battle with stage four pancreatic cancer. And for those who called him friend or worked by his side sifting through dirt on historic lands, Starbuck will be missed.
"It's a tremendous loss," said Edward Carpenter, the president of the Rogers Island Heritage Development Alliance in Fort Edward where Starbuck frequently worked. "He was diagnosed more than a year ago, but he we so dedicated to his work, he didn't let it stop him. He was digging here from July to the second week in November. He was driven by his work."
Carpenter said that Starbuck was excavating Rogers Island since the 1990s and that the majority of the items found in the former British military settlement, at one time the largest in the nation with 16,000 soldiers, were pulled from the ground by Starbuck. A gold braid for an officer's uniform, coins, musket balls, shards of pottery and animal bones informed historians of a soldier's life reflect Starbuck's efforts, Carpenter said, and make up the rotating collection on display at the island's visitor's center.
George Wertime, who was close friends with Starbuck since they were in kindergarten in Chestertown, said that Starbuck was always devoted to his work – traveling three and a half hours between Plymouth State University in New Hampshire to teach every week to his family homestead in Chestertown for the weekend. After Starbuck's diagnosis, Wertime said Starbuck continued his routine, that included numerous digs, by waking up every morning with one word on his mind: "fight."
"It was remarkable," Wertime said. "To keep fighting like that. He told me he would get up every morning and say 'fight, fight, fight' and then concentrate on the positive things. Even when he had neuropathy and had no feeling from his elbows to his hands and knees to his feet, he would still drive to Rogers Island. He had total and complete determination."
Plymouth State University Professor Emeritus Katherine Donahue has known Starbuck since 1976 when both were at Boston University. She said his scholarship and achievements led the university to honor him as a professor emeritus after he retired last August. And while his retirement was a blow to the university, she said his death leaves a void in the lives of the students who were enrolled in his field schools — one at Plymouth State and another at SUNY Adirondack.
"He worked incredibly hard and had loyal field workers," Donahue said. "They would age and still be working with him. They would show up everywhere. He was so special, such a bright person who was able to encourage students. He would tease them and they would like that. He was eager to pass on his love for archaeology."
Starbuck, a graduate of the University of Rochester with a Ph.D from Yale University, was best known locally as a scholar on the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. As part of that, he regularly excavated the grounds of Fort William Henry in Lake George too. At one point, he explored its well where, legend had it, a British payroll box of 250 coins was tossed to hide from the enemy. Starbuck never found the box of coins but did find lead and glass and part of a swivel gun used by British troops to defend the fort during a 1757 siege.
"For decades he conducted many archeological digs in and around the fort, finding artifacts related to the British, French and colonial forces that fought here," Melodie Viele, director of the fort, said. "He found tools and evidence of Native Americans living at this spot long before Europeans came to this place. Each piece was carefully collected and studied by Dr. Starbuck to expand or even shed new light on the knowledge we thought we knew of this area's vast history."
Starbuck also led the exhumation of Jane McCrea's grave in Fort Edward. The 17-year-old's death, at the hands of British-allied Indians in 1777, allegedly outraged Americans soldiers and inspired them to the historic victory at the Battle of Saratoga.
Wertime said that Starbuck was so devoted to his work that he never married. He also didn't have any close family. His parents died long ago and his brother drowned when a helicopter he was piloting crashed, landing upside down in a body of water. Wertime said it's unclear what will happen to the Chestertown family farm where Starbucks have lived since 1794.
[https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Archeologist-who-unearth-history-of-early-15834729.php]
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1949 - 2020 (71 years)
