A historian and an archaeologist went looking for a vanished English settlement in Illinois and expected a long difficult search. But they unexpectedly found the 19th-century village in the back yard of the historian's aunt.

"It's shocking to me that no one went looking for this," said archaeologist Robert Mazrim of Elkhart.

Back in 1818, English immigrant Morris Birkbeck founded the village of Wanborough in Edwards County in southeastern Illinois. Birkbeck also wrote and published books and letters that recorded his firsthand view of life on the Illinois frontier.

"I have been reading Birkbeck's stuff for 15 years just for the details about frontier life - not really focusing on Birkbeck," said Mazrim, director of the Sangamo Archaeological Center in Elkhart. "No one every really thought to look at the archaeology."

Mazrim became interested in Wanborough a few years ago, after he met Springfield historian Curtis Mann. Mann, now manager of the Sangamon Valley Collection of regional history at Lincoln Library, grew up in Edwards County and wanted to learn more about the settlers of this vanished village. "A lot of them are my ancestors," Mann said. "There were half a dozen I have family ties to."

Because Birkbeck's writings are nationally known among scholars, Mazrim assumed that someone already would have excavated Wanborough. But he discovered that no one had dug at the site of Birkbeck's colony. "Wanborough has been completely forgotten," Mazrim said.

According to Mann, Birkbeck was a widowed gentleman farmer from Surrey County, England, who had become frustrated with English life. He farmed rented land, and because he owned no property, he could not vote. He emigrated to the United States in 1817 and started looking for inexpensive land where he could start an agricultural community. He opposed slavery and avoided slaveholding territories. He pushed past the Indiana border and settled in southeastern Illinois.

Birkbeck had kept a journal of his travels through the United States and in 1817 published "Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois, with Proposals for the Establishment of a Colony of English." In 1818 he published "Letters from Illinois."

Birkbeck originally set out to establish a colony with fellow Englishman George Flower. But the two men had a falling out, leading Birkbeck to found Wanborough in 1818 and Flower to start his own colony of Albion. Albion survived and is the Edwards County seat.

Birkbeck wrote letters to England to encourage others to come to Wanborough, which was named for Birkbeck's farm in England. At its peak in 1822, Wanborough had 75 residents. The village had a potter, a blacksmith, a brewery, a tavern and other businesses.

But an informal census showed a gradual decline in population to less than 50 by 1829. Birkbeck's drowning death in 1825 contributed to the village's decline. Wanborough also lost residents to the nearby utopian community of New Harmony, Ind.

Wanborough failed by the 1840s. "It's an unusual experimental agricultural settlement," Mazrim said. "It's an unusual ethnicity, people straight from England, to be out here."

Mazrim and Mann set out to find Wanborough. Mann's research turned up Birkbeck's plat of the village, which Mazrim laid over an aerial photograph of the site. Mazrim was thrilled to discover that pastures and a few farmsteads sat on the site where the village had been. The lack of development meant the artifacts should be intact.

Mazrim and Mann took a group to Edwards County in March and made their first survey of sites around the village. "Then we decided to look for the big one - Morris Birkbeck's estate," Mazrim said. He expected a difficult, time-consuming search. But, Mazrim said with a glance toward Mann, "it turns out it was under his aunt's back yard, under the clothesline."

Mann said one of his cousins mentioned finding pieces of ceramic and glass in the garden, and his aunt said she found English coins. "A couple days later, I show up with Robert and his wife," Mann said. "Just in the little flower beds, we're pulling up pieces of ceramic, and then we started digging and just start pulling up material." Mann added, "We didn't even really have to look for it."

After digging some test sites, the group struck water and had to quit. Mazrim and Mann and a crew returned to Edwards County in September and resumed their work in Aunt Nina's yard.

On Thursday night, the pair presented some of their findings to a small audience at the Under the Prairie Museum at Mazrim's Sangamo Archaeological Center in Elkhart. The audience included charter members of the Illinois Foundation for Frontier Studies, which was incorporated in December. Mann heads the foundation, which primarily underwrites the Under the Prairie Museum.

So far, Mann and Mazrim's finds from Wanborough include shards of blue Cantonese porcelain, which Mazrim said was rare on the Illinois frontier. The Birkbecks would have brought it from England. Birkbeck wrote that he brought 5 tons of cargo with him.

The excavation also turned up French gold-rimmed porcelain and a rare piece of blue-and-white porcelain in the style that inspired Wedgewood ceramics. Also unearthed were buttons, pieces of flint used to trigger flintlock guns, pieces of pressed glass and a piece of French pottery that probably came from New Orleans. "This is a glimpse of a lifestyle that I genuinely did not think existed in Illinois," Mazrim said.

The artifacts are on display in the Under the Prairie Museum, next door to the Bluestem Bake Shop run by Mazrim's wife, Cynthia.

Mazrim and Mann plan to resume excavations in Edwards County as soon as they find a way to pay for it. Mann's goal is to write a book about the village.

Birkbeck, Mann said, "moved a slice of England to the Illinois frontier."