We built a bonfire today of scraps of wood we had and at its center was the stump of a tree we had out last fall. In its roots were large clumps of soil. After the fire was out I went over and discovered that this clay soil, the same soil that the original owners of the Spence house used two hundred years ago, turned into crude clumps of brick. It has that nice orange color (which means it was under fired and is soft) that the noggin bricks in the wall had. I some how felt what it must have been like all those years ago to turn clay into a building material.