SYLVESTER MANOR GIVES UP ITS SECRETS

East Hampton was in its fourth year of European settlement when Nathaniel Sylvester, a wealthy merchant, arrived on Shelter Island to build the plantation he called Sylvester Manor. Nathaniel and his wife, Gissel, originally from England, came to the island in 1652 via Barbados, where his brother was running the family's sugar plantation.

A recent archeological dig at Sylvester Manor has unearthed traces of its history not only from colonial days through the 19th century, but all the way back to prehistoric times. Its present owner, Alice Fiske, opened the grounds, along with their extensive and beautiful gardens, to public exploration on Friday afternoon.

The dig, which was winding up after two weeks of work, was the first sortie in what a team from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, helped by local volunteers and the Shelter Island Historical Society, hopes will be "the most extensive excavation ever of a northern plantation, in the Southern sense of the word," said Dave Brown, a UMass graduate student.

Samples of the team's finds were spread out on a table for visitors to admire. The artifacts included part of a prehistoric pipe stem (Manhanset Indians lived on Shelter Island before the arrival of the Europeans); pottery shards, a piece of coral (from the Caribbean, probably a direct link to Nathaniel Sylvester and probably used to make mortar); pieces of yellow Dutch brick (Nathaniel, like other British Royalists, fled for a time to Holland), and a piece of a pipe stem with an alligator carving still visible, which the archeologists think may have been part of a "Sir Walter Raleigh" pipe. (The head of Sir Walter, who introduced tobacco from the New World to the Court of Queen Elizabeth, formed the bowl of these popular 17th-century pipes.)

Animal bones and shells were dug up all over the grounds, along with broken pieces of a milk pan, found near what may have been a dairy building; part of an iron clasp, needles and what might have been buttons, and a pewter furniture tack. Several trenches were left open for the guests' inspection.

The 261-acre manor is still in the family. Mrs. Fiske, who greeted visitors aboard an old-fashioned motorized cart, is the widow of Nathaniel Sylvester's last direct descendant, Andrew Fiske.

Excavations in front of the manor house, built in 1753 to replace one that burned down, turned up debris associated with construction or destruction - mortar, brick, and nails - and what may prove to be a stone floor and part of the foundation walls of the original structure. The findings, together with clues in old family documents, suggest that the first manor house may well have stood on the front lawn of the present one.

Near the blooming gardens, which boast famous boxwoods grown from English seedlings and said to be the oldest in North America, the archeologists found not artifacts but evidence of an earlier garden, indicated by variations in soil color and consistency.

Historical evidence suggests that the Sylvesters may have been the first Quakers to settle in America. The manor house provided refuge to several members of the faith who had been persecuted in England, including George Fox, its founder. A Quaker cemetery still exists on Sylvester Manor today (as well as a fenced-off burial ground for Native Americans and slaves), and a chapter of the Society of Friends continues to meet there.

More will be known about Sylvester Manor's history when the artifacts are tested back at the university, along with samples taken from the bottom of Gardiner Creek, which the property faces. Soils from the garden beds will be tested as well; those samples are to be taken next month by a group from Colonial Williamsburg.

The two groups are working together on the project under the auspices of the Environmental Archeology Research Laboratories. Dr. Steven Mrozowski, who heads the University of Massachusetts group, hopes to continue his excavations in future summers.

MICHELLE NAPOLI