A preservation project at Carpenters' Hall led to a historic discovery that revealed our Founding Fathers' favorite snack. 

In this day and age, oysters are seen as a delicacy, but it wasn't always like that. 

"They were like the French fries of the 18th century," Carpenters' Hall Executive Director Michael Norris said. "People had them for breakfast, and there were vendors on the street, taverns sold them."

"Philadelphia was the largest hub for oysters in the United States in the late 1880s," Fishtown Seafood owner Bryan Szeliga said. "About 800 million oysters passed through Philadelphia either for local consumption or through wholesale and into other markets."

The shells of those hundreds of millions of oysters had to go somewhere. So, back then, people got creative. 

"They just had so many shells," Norris said. "They didn't know what to do with them. Oyster shells were used to pave the streets and were used as ballasts on ships."

Now, shards of oysters can be found all throughout the city, right under our feet, including at Carpenters' Hall.

The historic brick building in Old City is known as the meeting place for the First Continental Congress back in 1774. 

In 2023, the site underwent a preservation project that led to the excavation of the building's perimeter by archeologists. 

"This is the area during that excavation when they found some pottery shards, some shards of oyster shells," Norris said. "George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson wrote about their oyster consumption, and many of those folks met here."

Although oysters were a staple during the country's revolutionary era, the shellfish's history goes back well before then. 

"Our European settlers learned about oyster culture from the Native Americans who, obviously, had been harvesting for centuries long before we showed up," Norris said.

In light of National Oyster Day on Tuesday, organizers welcomed people of all ages to Carpenters' Hall for the Shells of Liberty Oyster Bash. 

The event was in partnership with Carpenters' Hall, Fishtown Seafood and Triple Bottom Brewing. Aside from enjoying drinks and oysters, proceeds of the event went to the Delaware Estuary to help educate the community on the role oysters play in our environment.

"They're really an important part of marine ecosystems environmentally because they help filter the water and keep things clean," Norris said. "We thought it would be really fun to celebrate the day and to recognize a product that was so pervasive and such an important part of colonial culture and colonial cuisine."

It's a taste of history that's connecting us even centuries later.