Although Mathews County has its share of historic buildings—from New Point Lighthouse and its courthouse to the Tompkins Cottage, just to name a few—there’s a wealth of history hiding just inches below the topsoil.

And thanks to the hard work of some amateur archaeologists, an important piece of that history is being revealed to the public; a discovery that could one day result in Fort Nonsense being listed on the National Register of Historic Places twice … once for the Civil War earthworks that give the site its name, and a second time for the colonial-era domestic site underneath.

"We think this is a major find," Forrest Morgan said of the roughly 800 artifacts that have been unearthed, all dating from 1700 to just before the American Revolution. "It will be a project that will tell us a great deal about the history of Mathews County," he said of the ongoing dig.

Morgan, vice president of the Middle Peninsula chapter of the Archa...