Stone Vault with Nitch( Gerard Fowke research)

I'm very glad I got a copy of Gerard Fowke's 1910 "Antiquities of Central and South-Eastern Missouri.

In it are photo's of what he calls "Stone Vaults" which correlate exactly to the structure near my site. The Southern facing doorway exists in these. This would strongly support the idea that this  easily pre-dates the arrival of the Europeans. I had someone with a professional metal detector out and he was surprised that we found no nails and barely any other metal objects. This would explain it.

Nitch

'The "enclosure" is actually a cellar for a house. The niche in the cellar wall is called a "cooling closet" in Pennsylvania. It was used to keep milk, cream, and butter cool during the summer months. They may have been used for other purposes as well. The few dated examples we have in PA, RI, CT, & MA date to the 1700's. In the overall photo there is a square stone structure in the lower left corner. This was probably the base to a large chimney. If you poke around to might find brick fragments in this area. In the past few months, I have begun compiling and tracking down examples of this cellar wall niches. This is nice find and the first one reported from a NY site. They are not common.' James E. Gage author of Root Cellars in America: Their History, Design and Construction 1609-1920

theseventhgeneration  said:

" I found one of these cooling closets in Central NY 2 years ago. Click here for a link to the Rock Piles post on that structure."