An amazing story of shoe-leather archaeology deep in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina:

Buried in the earth are what are believed to be remnants of one or more communities of escaped slaves, known as maroons, who built homes and carved out lives where their freedom depended on secrecy. Researchers now think settlements may have existed there on and off for hundreds of years; their occupants relying on the swamp’s forbidding conditions to give safe haven from those who wanted to return them to chains.

Historical archaeologist Dan Sayers spent years researching documents and talking to residents but his big break came when he reinvented his approach toward interviews:

Locals were stumped when he inquired about hills in the flat swampland.

His luck changed, Sayers said, when he figured out how to phrase the right questions.

In February 2004, he asked refuge forester Bryan Poovey about islands.

“He said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll take you out to one,’ ” Sayers said.

Very often, how you structure your questions determines the answers you’ll receive.

A consultant group has revealed a plan for the future of Pleasure Beach:

The plan calls for the construction of food kiosks, public restrooms, sporting fields, a playground, adult fitness equipment, pavilions, walking paths and educational programming on the city-owned property that once was the site of an amusement park.

“You don’t have to do much to make Pleasure Beach a place people will want to go,” said Sorge, a principal of the Hamden-based company hired by the city to map out a plan for the peninsula’s revival.

But, of course, the city must make it accessible. Officials have pledged to reopen the summertime oasis to the public by the end of 2012.

This is Bridgeport so I’ll believe it when I see it.

To be fair, the Finch administration has made more steps toward reopening access than anybody since the bridge burned in 1996. This summer the city replaced the decrepit bridge footing on the mainland side with a sparkly fishing and recreational pier, seen above. Only took them a decade and a half!

The article also says the permitting has been completed to install a floating dock at the base of the pier from which the water taxi will operate. The pier features a cordoned queue on its right-hand side; presumably this will be the entry and exit to a gangway and the floating dock below.

This is the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London, Connecticut almost six years after the Supreme Court decided money talks and personal property is bullshit. The “municipal development plan” by the New London Development Corporation, the private developer behind the debacle, promised a 250-room hotel, up to 80 condominiums, 450,000 square feet of office space, and a national Coast Guard museum. But in the year 2011, the NLDC is bankrupt, Pfizer has moved across the river to Groton, and the city of New London doesn’t even own this land.

The area, originally known as Mamacock, was a peninsular pile of rocks in the Thames River just south of New London until the American Revolution. New London was then Connecticut’s most important harbor, deep water sheltered three miles upriver from Long Island Sound. It was also the state’s privateering capital. To protect it, Governor Jonathan Trumbull and his Council of Safety ordered a fort to be built on Mamacock overlooking the harbor. Together, Fort Trumbull and another fort on the opposite bank in Groton, called Fort Griswold, maintained a protective screen across the harbor. Records show several examples of American vessels, hotly pursued by British warships, saved by the aegis of the forts’ cannons. The reality was more bark than bite since both forts were undergunned and undermanned, but the British didn’t know that. In September 1781, Benedict Arnold (originally from Norwich, just upriver from New London) burned the town by landing forces on both sides of the river’s mouth, marching north, and capturing the forts from behind.

Fort Trumbull was nothing more than an earthworks and stockade during the Revolution but later, during the 19th century, it was developed into a stone-walled citadel. Today the complex is a state park with gorgeous views overlooking the river.

The homes outside the park were routinely labeled a “working-class neighborhood” by media during the Kelo v. New London court battle, “working class” being shorthand for “pre-gentrified” or “non-McMansiony.” It’s not a wrong assessment but all of New London could fall under that description. New London is actually one of my favorite towns in Connecticut. Unlike a lot of coastal municipalities in this state, the city actually feels like a New England seaport, full of crying seagulls and hilly streets and Federal-style houses, some well-kept and others that could be great again. New London has been bleeding population since 1960, making it feel big and empty (I never have a problem finding a parking space), but with a shabby bohemian atmosphere of murals and galleries and food co-ops and vintage-clothing stores holding it together. I could spend days snapping photos there, and if I were younger and didn’t have to worry about jobs or my sons’ schools, I might even move there.

But the citizens of New London do have to worry about jobs and schools, which is why it’s so unfortunate they couldn’t be better served by their government. Never mentioned in any of the media coverage of the court battle was how derelict the downtown area is. Walking along Bank and State Streets, I estimate that one-third to one-quarter of the storefronts are empty and available for lease. It’s been that way for years. Most of the businesses are bars, catering I suppose to the students of the Coast Guard Academy, Connecticut College, and the handful of other colleges in town (I’ve never been in downtown New London on a Friday night, but I always imagine fistfights in the street and sailors flying through plate-glass windows). But instead of redeveloping the downtown with a hotel or condo units or office space — all of which there’s plenty of room for — the NLDC and the city government tarred Fort Trumbull — that’s what? a half-mile away? — as a blighted ghetto and destroyed a functioning residential neighborhood.

Which is now just fields of weeds and rocks. The city doesn’t even own the weeds and rocks. The NLDC was supposed to turn over the titles to the city once the demolition was complete but they never did; and the city is reluctant to pursue action because then they would have to mow the weeds and be responsible if someone fell off the rocks. I suppose theoretically the NLDC pays property taxes on the lots — but since they’re bankrupt, that money is just hash marks on paper. Eminent domain is touted as being for the public good. But in New London, the public paid taxes so the government could steal their own land which they didn’t even get.

Today the only residents of Fort Trumbull are a clowder of stray cats. Somebody built a little scrap shelter for them on a rocky mound. There’s a water dish and I met some moms and kids who had come to feed them. The cats of New London are better off than the people.

The Port Authority wants to transform the sleek TWA terminal at JFK International Airport into a small hotel with a complex of stores and eateries:

After a bankrupt TWA was bought by American Airlines in 2001, the terminal closed. Jet-Blue Airways eventually built a new facility around the Saarinen-designed building. Since then, it has sat empty. Attempts to find a tenant fell short. So in 2008, the Port Authority decided to spend $20 million to remove asbestos and restore the interior to better appeal to developers.

Most of the story is behind WSJ’s pay wall but you can click over to the slideshow.

I hope they do something with it; the spy-jazz curves of the terminal scream for a restaurant and bar, and with most airport saloons nowadays kept past security, it’s often tough to find a place to meet when picking up or dropping off. It would definitely tilt my preference toward Jet Blue when booking if I could begin or end my journey with some Dr. No ambiance not unlike that of the Encounter at LAX.

But what’s notable here is that the Port Authority is actually investing in a historic property. By bringing it up to modern standards, they’ve reduced the risk for potential first-time tenants, who would otherwise have to do that work on their own or at least negotiate renovations with the PA, both of which would cost money the tenant may not recoup. And, even if the tenant should fail or leave, the terminal will still be usable by future tenants, keeping the PA on track to eventually see a return on that $20 million. This stands in contrast to the litigious breed of preservationist, who refuses to spend for anything beyond lawyers’ fees but then acts confused when no one wants to purchase a leaky, asbestos-filled ruin.

Historic preservation doesn’t require lawsuits or special designations of status. It’s very easy. If you want to save an old building, all you have to do is buy it and take care of it.

Santa left a copy of Michael J. Trinklein’s Lost States under the tree this year, a book I’ve been wanting to crack for months. I recommend it if you too are fascinated by lost or forgotten geography — with the caveat that Lost States is more of a compilation of cartography paired with Wikipedia entries than a serious history book.

The full title and subhead of the book is Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It. Here’s my true story: between 2005 and 2007, I shopped a book idea entitled The Lost States of America. My high-concept tagline was, “Everybody knows there are fifty states. But what about the ones that didn’t make it?”

I eventually abandoned the project, even though I wrote the first chapter (18,000 words!), due to lack of interest from agents or publishers and a growing realization that my energies were better spent elsewhere. Along the way I accumulated a number of rejection letters, including my favorite from an agent who wrote a long reply about how he wanted to write a history of a lost-state endeavor near where he lived. He declined to represent my book, therefore, lest it interfere with his. I chuckle just thinking about that letter. Of course, if he had wanted to write his book so badly, he would have done so already. But he hasn’t and he never will. I prize that rejection as the quintessential example of everything that’s wrong with big-name book publishing. Trinklein, an Emmy-nominated PBS producer, self-published the original version of Lost States. It seems publishers were just as deaf to him as they were to me.

My concept differed from Trinklein’s in that I planned to write a textual history book about ten different lost states (eight of which Trinklein includes). Trinklein opted for a more graphic presentation. Each of the 74 entries features a full-page chart crafted to resemble a map from the relevant time period — nicely done. A 300-word description faces it. And yet while Trinklein writes in a breezy style that is sometimes fun, sometimes flippant, his renditions are sometimes at history’ s expense.

Take Franklin, for instance. Trinklein cites Samuel Cole Williams’s History of the Lost State of Franklin as the source for his entry, a reference I also read while researching my 2004 Reason piece on Franklin. Trinklein disparages the whole idea of Franklin, even going so far as to assert that Benjamin Franklin, for whom the endeavor was named, was hostile to it. Not so; the Philadelphian was politely noncommittal. Trinklein also says that North Carolina troops crushed the Franklin movement militarily. Again, not true: Indian attacks in what is today western Tennessee caused North Carolina to walk away from the Franklin issue, eventually leading to the creation of the Volunteer State in its place. I caught several other errors throughout the book and the customer reviews over at Amazon list a bunch more.

Trinklein is also hindered by his lack of focus. The words “George W. Bush,” “Iraq,” and “quagmire” pop up a lot — even though the copyright on the book is 2010. He reminds me of my grad-school professors who, as late as the early 21st century, would spin themselves into a tizzy over Ronald Reagan and Grenada. A couple of entries (New Connecticut, Nickajack) go off on silly tangents, something a writer can’t afford when he’s jotting in eight-graf blurbs.

Like Wikipedia, the scholarship of Trinklein’s hardbound gazetteer is dodgy but it’s a good place to begin an inquiry. Enjoy the maps and follow the bibliography to more factual accounts of events.

Writing professionally, I believe, is like being a drunken lighthouse keeper: it’s lonely; and for every dozen vessels safely shepherded to their destination, you have a spectacular shipwreck on the rocks. Years ago, my reaction to Lost States would have been jealousy. Experience has taught me since that whatever enemies a writer may have, other authors aren’t among them. I may resurrect my old book idea, although with a focus on a single lost state and told through a biographical narrative, when I finish my current project. But more on that later.

Recently I attended a biannual meeting of The Association for the Study of Connecticut History where I heard Marta Daniels speak about her co-discovery of the first tract of land owned by Venture Smith. Smith, if you’ve never heard of him, was an 18th-century African slave who, through sheer acumen and industry, died in 1805 a free and wealthy Connecticut landowner. His autobiography is the only existing testimony in which the narrator describes his childhood in Africa, his subsequent capture and servitude in America, and his life as a free man. He’s becoming something of a folk hero here in Connecticut, as he should be.

Daniels, an antiquarian, described how she and hydrographer Nancy Byrne pinpointed Smith’s original land in Stonington. The general area of the tract was known but previous researchers had made several critical errors in interpreting Smith’s deed, leading to the wrong piece of land being attributed to him. What stumped historians was that the deed clearly noted the parcel’s four corners were marked by rocks with certain initials carved into them — but no one could find the rocks. By returning to the original deed and using GIS, Daniels and Byrne were able to correctly identify the shape and location of the parcel. The women then plunged into the muggy, mosquito-choked forest to test their theory, and sure enough, located the markers. The revealed parcel further demonstrates Smith’s business sense. As a rocky hillside, the 26 acres were probably perceived as junk land by whites, but for Smith, who made his money lumbering and trading, they were a trove, thickly wooded and providing access to the Sound. He sold the land four years later at a profit.

Daniels gave a longer version of the same presentation on C-SPAN.

Imagine my excitement at discovering a book titled Abandoned Villages and Ghost Towns of New England at my local bookstore. Finally! I thought: a solid regional history of the places I stumble upon during my wanderings, terrestrial and nautical.

Then imagine my disappointment upon bringing it home to discover it full of prose such as this:

As we traverse overgrown trails that were once well worn with life, it becomes clear these forsaken hamlets had similar ends even though no two settlements were completely alike. Their history and people are often all but forgotten in the shuffle of time and evolution. This could be one reason why many of them are haunted.

Ah, fiddlesticks. What I had believed to be a historical touring guide is instead a collection of Weird NJ hokum, 200 pages of Halloween-store plastic and polyester in lieu of actual archival work. Worse still, the mistake was my own fault: if I had only glanced at the bibliography before lining up at the register, I would have seen most of the sources are either other fiction collections by D’Agostino or spooky storybooks similar to his.

There are lots of photos and a few maps, and Abandoned Villages is best when D’Agostino steps out of the picture completely, like when he quotes at length newspaper articles about the flooding of Flagstaff, Maine. But D’Agostino gives the impression he didn’t do much original research himself, and whatever factual evidence he presents is immediately ruined with personal asides about curses and fluctuations in his EMF meters.

Abandoned Villages is the literary equivalent of a ghost-hunting television show: 10 percent history diluted by 90 percent green night-vision. If you’re interested in any of the towns listed in the table of contents, my advice is to contact the historical society or government agency D’Agostino posts at the end of each chapter and proceeding on your own from there.

I have an article busting the myths surrounding Vincent Island, a deserted acre of rock and sand less than half a mile off Connecticut’s shoreline, in today’s Stamford Advocate.

I’m especially proud of this piece because there are so many garbled stories about the island (its Wikipedia entry, for example); even a current co-owner, a nice old lady, insists on believing her well-worn yarns instead of documented evidence to the contrary. I did a fair amount of archival research on the island and uncovered stuff not even the Stamford Historical Society knew about.

The island is best known for its overgrown ruins of a large cottage, which was built by an owner named Paul Smart:

In 1945 the island was bought by Paul Hurlburt Smart, a lawyer and world-class sailor who lived in Darien.

Smart’s 1979 obituary is a laundry list of accolades. Born in Nova Scotia, he was a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law and Oxford; was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart in World War I; belonged to several yachting clubs and was first commodore of the Noroton Yacht Club; was chairman of the Olympic Yachting Committee, captained and managed the 1972 Olympic Yachting team; and himself won gold sailing in the 1948 Olympics.

Also, Smart enjoyed group sex.

From page 22 of a December 2, 1943 New York Times news story (not online):

Paul H. Smart, a lawyer who is well known in the midtown district as a night club frequenter, was sentenced yesterday in Special Sessions to a nine-month penitentiary term on his guilty plea two weeks ago with two other men and two women to indecently exposing themselves in an East Forty-seventh Street apartment that the police raided on the night of Sept. 29.

The other men, one of whom owned the apartment, received six-month workhouse sentences. The women, both 22 years old, each received three-month workhouse terms. The fact that Smart was given a much harsher sentence in comparison suggests prosecutors perceived him as the ringleader.

To be fair, the article never says what exactly the group was doing; they could have been having an orgy, yes, but they could have been nudists playing charades too. The article ends with this:

The sentences were pronounced after Assistant District Attorney Lawrence J. McKenna had described the five as “moral lepers who should be dealt with severely as a deterrent to others of their kind.” He added that the five were members of a “degenerate clique.”

Some degenerate. Five years later Smart the decorated war vet and island landlord won gold at the Olympics — at the age of 56. As with the Michael Phelps brouhaha last year, authorities then and now seem shocked that folks who work hard, play hard. I’m sure moral finger-waggers everywhere champ at the bit to someday raid an Olympic Village and disrupt the fabled hook-up parties rumored to take place within.

Or is that just another urban legend I must investigate?