Earliest Evidence of Old Bay Discovered in St. Mary’s

Archaeologists from the St. Mary’s City Conservatory have unearthed the oldest known evidence of Old Bay seasoning use in Maryland, dating from the 1670s. St. Mary's City, founded in 1634, is a former colonial town that was Maryland's first European settlement and capital.

The new-found artifacts, discovered in the ruins of a seventeenth century inn known as Smith’s Ordinary, include the diary of William Nuthead, Maryland’s first printer, and a small pewter box.

In an August 4, 1678, diary entry, Nuthead writes, “The Yaocomaco people did teach’th us how to steam the local blue crabbes. With the lib'ral application of Van Sw'ringen’s spice of the Olde Bay and combin'd with the Indian’s maze and beer’st from Nathaniel Boh’s brew'ry, this hast becometh our summ'r feast’ng food.”

A pewter box, a precursor to the iconic Old Bay tin, was found remarkably well preserved buried within a wrapping of beaver pelt. It’s faded, hand-painted cover has traditional Old Bay colors and remnants of the spice were detected inside. Historians believe it was forged in St. Mary’s City.

Part of Old Bay’s popularity in the colonial period resulted from settlers’ dislike of their new local foods. “Unaccustom'd as we art to the native fl'ra and fauna, the heavy topp’ng of the spice of the Olde Bay, the most trad'd commodity in the settlement, extends from the gentrifi'd to the indentur'd,” Nuthead wrote.

Until the St. Mary’s discovery, the invention of Old Bay was ascribed to Gustav Brunn, a German Jewish refugee in Baltimore, in 1940. However, it was Dutch settler Garrett Van Sweringen, who operated an inn at the St. Mary’s dig site in the 1660s and came from a family of Rotterdam spice traders, that first brought Old Bay to America, anthropologists determined.

The St. Mary’s artifacts will be available for public viewing in March while on loan to the Baltimore Museum of Natural History.