Jacob
Cecil

Since 1755

I grew up on land purchased in 1755, in a farmhouse built by my family in 1775 or 1790 or 1795. When we moved out of this house and off of this land it broke that line, it ended the legacy. 

My family lost the farm, and the house, in the 1980s through highway expansion, and land development deals and the Savings and Loan Crisis. By excavating the historical records, family photographs, archaeological artifacts, SEC reports, Court of Appeals records, and presidential pardons I am searching for remnants and whereabouts of this stolen legacy.

I present this work as report of fact and a wandering daydream. A blind search – like a dive beneath the brown waters of the Monocacy River that cradles the once family farm. How does the archive of objects and artifacts dug from beneath the road exist as a palimpsest to what lives on its surface? What toll is taken on the land and a family by those that seek to exploit it?