First Street, part of a busy working class Newark neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, included:

• a few houses, built before 1860, stood on the blocks between New Street and Sussex Avenue,
• factories, located at the eastern end of the street beyond Sussex Avenue in 1873, included a knife factory, hat factory, and tannery, and
• industries lined the Morris Canal, which can be seen on the map just one block east of First Street and Sussex Avenue.

The 1873 Hopkins Atlas of Newark shows development on the southern end of First Street. These blocks lay between a residential neighborhood to the south near Warren Street and the factories closer to the Morris Canal. The red outlines show the lots that archaeologists excavated in 2003-2005.

This drawing from Harper's Magazine in 1879 shows what the First Street neighborhood may have looked like with new housing. There were factories with their smokestacks billowing nearby, but the area had a rural feeling.

Scarlett and Scarlett of Newark produced a map in 1887 that shows all of the vacant lots that had been previously studied (outlined in red) with houses. The map also shows a large patent leather factory at the north end of First Street.

Most of the houses were occupied by just one, two or sometimes three families. Families would often take in relatives or boarders to help pay the bills, and even though every room was occupied, the neighborhood never had the kind of overcrowded tenements that characterized poorer parts of Newark. The First Street houses provided homes to Irish and German immigrants; to native-born families with Irish, German, and English backgrounds; and, by 1900, to African Americans from Virginia.

Family members who were old enough had jobs primarily in the numerous large factories that were Newark's claim to fame. The city was known for the production of leather (especially patent leather and other specialty goods), shoes, hats, thread, machine parts, even celluloid (an early type of plastic); and for its breweries. Workers commuted to their factory jobs right in the neighborhood or to the many factories all over town on foot or by horse-drawn streetcars and, by 1895, electric trolleys. First Street received its own trolley in 1900.

The two eldest sons held jobs as a leather worker and a hardware clerk in 1880. They would later go into business themselves with the Fagan Brothers Coal Yard, located on the same block as their home, at 408-410 Central Avenue. The Fagan family and their descendants remained in residence at 30 First Street until the 1930s.

In contrast to 30 First Street, many houses were leased by their owners. One example was 104 First Street. Built around 1873, the first owners lived there, but the property changed hands several times after 1886 and was rented out as two apartments. Some of earliest African Americans on

Archaeologists decide where to dig. Before water lines and sewers were laid in the streets, residents used well or rain water. Every house collected water in a cistern, and had a backyard outhouse or privy.

With the installation of water hookups, residents no longer needed wells or cisterns. They also hooked up to the sewers and installed indoor water closets, which made backyard privies obsolete.

As the privy pits generally were lined with stone and were cleaned out periodically, residents often used the empty pits for garbage disposal. The trash provided archaeologists with an excellent collection of artifacts - objects from the past - that became clues to their lifestyles.

Water and sewer hookups on First Street were done in stages. By 1885 water pipes had been installed between West Market and Sussex, and by 1891 all of the houses would have had access to sewers. Of course, not every owner hooked up promptly, and some people may have continued to use backyard privies longer than others. Tenants would have to wait for the landlord to pay the fees to hook up to public utilities and then pay to install indoor plumbing.

At home sites that were built before utilities, archaeologists expected to find deposits of 19th-century trash in old privy shafts, and they conducted test excavations in these yards.

NJDOT used a backhoe to strip away upper layers of fill soil, down to the old, buried surface layer or to the tops of old pits. They mapped the exposed area and, as new features appeared, they added them to the map.

Once a shaft was located, workers dug a portion of soil by hand with shovels and trowels and sifted it through wire mesh to determine the type of deposit. When workers excavated soils one layer at a time, they uncovered distinct layers from residents' separate dumping episodes. Then they placed artifacts in bags labeled with the address, the number of the excavation unit, and a consecutive number representing the soil layer.

The backyard archaeological sites are registered with the New Jersey State Museum and are given official Smithsonian site numbers. Listed after the street and number are the digits for New Jersey (28), two letters (Ex) for Essex County and a unique number for each site. The assigned numbers are:

Documents can tell us a lot about the people of historic First Street. Artifacts give us information about how these residents lived, about differences in lifestyles among the families, and how their lives may have changed over time.

Other materials recovered included food remains and food containers, which showed how much households spent on food and how food preferences differed along ethnic lines. There also were examples of style, such as ceramic and glass dishes and decorative items for home dining; personal items, such as smoking pipes, clothing items and buttons; toys that belonged to the children who grew up in the houses; grooming and hygiene items; and medicine bottles.

Items from stores and saloons are examples of how these establishments fit into the social and economic life of a neighborhood.

Of the two porcelain saucers found in the brick and stone shaft structure at 106 First Street, the one on the left has a painted design. The dishes may have been from the saloon that stood on this lot, or may have belonged to one of the families living above the saloon.