Digging into hobbyist’s legacy

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — The writings of an 81-year-old Western Maryland man who died in February may someday help future archaeologists.

Spencer Geasey, who spent much of his life digging for artifacts of early local inhabitants and writing about his findings, amassed a large library of those writings and other rare archaeology books.

His wife, Nancy, donated her husband’s collection of about 300 books and documents to the Maryland Room of the C. Burr Artz Public Library last month. The publications occupy several shelves and will soon be catalogued, said Mary Mannix, manager of the Maryland Room.

Mr. Geasey came to Maryland in 1945, after serving in World War II and losing a leg in the Battle of the Bulge. He went to work at Fort Detrick, but in his spare time he pursued his childhood passion of archaeology. Mr. Geasey grew up on Long Island, N.Y., but had family in Frederick County and settled there.

He worked in Fort Detrick’s housing office for most of his career. When he retired in 1975, he got a part-time job as a field assistant with the State Highway Administration, at last getting paid for what he loved to do. Archaeological digs — which precede most highway projects — included Mr. Geasey, who also preparing reports on them.

“They go into enormous detail,” Mrs. Geasey said. “They’re not meant for the general public.”

Still, the reports are valuable to those who want to know about people who inhabited a certain area at a certain time. Mr. Geasey worked for the highway department for 22 years, but he never retired from archaeology.

He was especially consumed with rhyolite stone, a material used to make tools in the Archaic period, from about 8,000 years ago to about 4,000 years ago. When he and Mrs. Geasey, also an archaeology buff, married 27 years ago, they bought a house near a rhyolite quarry. On their property is a rhyolite outcropping known as Shelter Rock.

Mr. Geasey wrote extensively about rhyolite tools. The material was in such demand that American Indians would travel several hundred miles to get it. They would make the tools while camping at Shelter Rock and carry them home.

Rhyolite is formed from volcanic eruptions and can be found in many stone walls and buildings from Myersville to Gambrill State Park.

Mr. Geasey collected and wrote for archaeological journals in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. His collection also includes textbooks of the pre-European cultures living in what is now the Mid-Atlantic region.

Mr. Geasey continued to take part in digs and write about his findings until shortly before his death from a stroke. “He could out-walk all of them,” despite wearing a 15-pound wooden leg, Mrs. Geasey said. “He would walk a field all day.”

Mr. Geasey turned over 41,000 artifacts he collected to the Maryland Historical Trust in 1992. The next year, the trust awarded him the Calvert Prize, the state’s top honor for historic preservation. He collected another 14,000 artifacts in the remainder of his lifetime, which will someday be turned over to the trust.

Mrs. Mannix estimated his book collection to be the largest in the state, outside that of the Maryland Historical Trust and the research library of the Jefferson Patterson Park Museum and Library.

Mr. Geasey was a self-taught archaeologist, his wife said. He never graduated from high school. In the 1990s, he earned a general equivalency diploma. Much of his knowledge came from his books and his experience.

“People in this area who are doing local research wouldn’t know about these materials if they weren’t here,” Mrs. Mannix said of Mr. Geasey’s collection. “It’s a great resource to people in this community.”