According to the Texas State Historical Association's Handbook of Texas, while Houston was at Bernardo, he took possession of the Twin Sisters, a pair of cannons -- made in Cincinnati and paid for by Ohioans sympathetic to the Texans' cause -- used at San Jacinto. It was the only artillery in Houston's army.

Bernardo was inhabited through the end of the Civil War. In 1866, the main building was dismantled and the timbers were used to build another home elsewhere.

“From an archaeological standpoint, that's wonderful,” Bruseth said, explaining that abandonment of the site makes identifying artifacts easier. “What we have here is like a time capsule. Everything is going to be related to the Groce plantation Bernardo.”

Once the electronic scanning is completed, other researchers headed by the nonprofit Houston-based Community Archaeology Research Institute will begin painstaking digging based on the electronic maps. Depending on what's found, Bruseth speculated the dig could go on for years.

Researchers also have maps drawn around 1930 by Sarah Ann Groce Berlet based on information she remembered from her father, who was Leonard Groce's son. Her great-grandfather, plantation founder Jared Groce, died in late 1836. Originally buried on the property, his remains and those of other family members later were removed to a cemetery in nearby Hempstead when ownership of the place changed hands.

But the property still includes a cemetery with tombstones marking deaths in the 1840s, making them among the oldest identified gravesites in Texas.

“The artifacts of significance, I certainly don't want to keep them in boxes,” said Brown, who legally would own whatever is found. “Anything they think is suitable for the public to see, we probably can make a deal with a museum. We certainly want people interested in this type of artifacts to view them somewhere where it's appropriate”