Mastodons near Campbell Farm in Hanover

During the summer of 1801, the first scientific expedition financed by the fledgling United States, arrived in Montgomery, New York in search of mammoth bones. The expedition, led by Charles Willson Peale of Philadephia, exhumed bones from three marl pits. One marl pit was located at the Joseph Barber Farm, less than a mile from the old Campbell farm.

Map giving location of Mastodon Pit and Campbell farm.The Marl Pit is just north of 17K, NW of Dollar General (black arrow). The outline of the Campbell Farm (sold to Barkley in 1793) is in purple

By 1801, most of the Campbells had left Montgomery for Deerpark, New York. Nathan and Levi (brothers of Joel) still farmed the original Campbell farm that was on St Andrews Road. Perhaps they witnessed the spectacle.

Peale Painting of excavation/draining of the marl pits.

Prior to their relocation, the Campbells almost certainly had seen some of the large bones unearthed by their neighbors. The reverend of the Goodwill Church, Robert Annan, had found bones on his property in 1780. Just west of the village in 1794, bones were found near the house of Archibald Crawford. In 1793, the same year the Campbell siblings gathered to sell the 100 acre parcel shown above, Joseph Barber found several rib bones while digging marl. Did they see Barber's find on what may have been their final visit to Montgomery?

The bones were of such general interest that General Washington and other officers stationed at Newburgh in 1780 made a special trip to view them. (Robert Annan, “Account of a Skeleton of a Large Animal, Found Near Hudson’s River, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2, pt. 1 (1793): 160-4.)

Two complete skeletons were assembled from the Montgomery expedition. One is exhibited in the Hessisches Landemuseum in Darmstadt, Germany. The other was destroyed by fire in Baltimore, Maryland in 1850. (National Register of Historic Places, Section 8, p1)

Mastodon at Hessisches Landemuseum in Darmstadt, Germany.  Courtesy of nonfictionminute.org

However, there are literally hundreds of places to see mastodon fossils or skeletons.  Including one unearthed in 1845 in nearby Newburgh, New York.  It is displayed in the American Natural History Museum in New York.