Step 1: Site Selection & Background Research
Selecting the Site | Background Research
More About Step 1:
Archaeology:" A Step-by-Step Process
A Pictorial Guide to Site Selection and Background ResearchThe Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Shop was selected for archaeological investigation because of the property's long and interesting history. This site provided a unique opportunity to study artifacts from archaeological contexts in relation to those still on the shop's shelves. Primary sources were a key to research of the Apothecary shop. These records, found in the shop when it closed in 1933, included account books, letters, bills of sale and receipt books. Along with records from the shop, documents of the Alexandria Water Company proved useful. The piped water this company supplied resulted in the abandonment of the shop's well which was then filled with trash.
Edward Stabler was born in Petersburg, Virginia in 1769, the youngest child of devout Quakers, Edward and Mary Robinson Stabler. As a young man, he was apprenticed with a tanner, but then went to work at his brother William's apothecary in Leesburg, where he learned his profession. Edward moved to Alexandria in 1792 where he established his own apothecary, the site of which is not known, but may have been located only a few doors south of the present location.
The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Shop, at 105-107 South Fairfax Street looks much the same today as it did when it was opened by Edward Stabler in 1796. The building which houses the shop at 107 South Fairfax Street, was built in 1774 and Stabler purchased it in 1805. The adjoining building (105 S. Fairfax) was purchased by Stabler in 1829. The Apothecary Shop eventually grew into an important business and social institution for patrons such as the Washington, Mason, Custis and Lee families.
In 1794, Edward married his first wife, Mary Pleasant and they had five children before her death in 1806. Their eldest son, William, became a druggist, and eventually worked with his father. In 1808, Edward remarried Mary Hartshorne, with whom he had 11 children. In 1835, their eldest child, Mary Pleasants Stabler, married a young druggist from England named John Leadbeater. John Leadbeater became the partner of his bother-in-law, William Stabler in 1844. When William died in 1852, John Leadbeater bought the business. His son, Edward Stabler Leadbeater, and his descendants became the proprietors of shop.
Lawrence Fawcett, who worked in the packing room of the Wholesale Department in 1912, described the Leadbeater establishment as it appeared at that time; A retail shop on the first floor for the sale of drugs, herbs and extracts; the second story was used for wholesale and bottling; the third floor was for storage. A third building, to the south, was used to make extracts, flavors and liniments. On the second floor was the wholesale department, which was the largest part of the business.
Many of the retail sales were to customers who visited the shop on foot and carried their purchases with them. Later delivery boys on bicycles or horse-drawn wagons delivered orders to local destinations. By 1912, the Leadbeaters kept the largest stock of drugs in the Washington area and are believed to have served six or seven states. The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary was one of the oldest drug stores in the United States in continuous operation by one family in 1933. Many of the artifacts excavated by Alexandria Archaeology are exhibited in the Apothecary Shop Museum.
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