In a parking lot behind Main Street Station, a backhoe broke ground yesterday to unearth an important piece of Richmond's slave history.

The preliminary archaeological survey of Lumpkin's Jail, once a holding pen for slaves waiting to be auctioned, began 141 years to the day after freedom came in the form of Union troops marching into a burning Richmond.

The city's largest slave jail was dismantled in the late 19th century.

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The site remains a symbol not only of pain but also of reconciliation and redemption. Robert Lumpkin married a black woman who after his death leased the jail to a school for freed blacks that ultimately became Virginia Union University.

"I'm taking it to a spiritual level: What man means for evil, God means for good," said Councilwoman Delores L. McQuinn, chairwoman of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission and a minister.

The excavation was spurred by plans to expand the trail. The commission held a late-morning ceremony featuring music by choirs from Armstrong and George Wythe high schools. Then Department of Public Works employees started to dig.

"It truly represents a transition from one period of history to another, right here at this site," said Matthew R. Laird, senior researcher for the James River Institute for Archaeology. The firm is conducting the preliminary excavation, which costs about $14,000.

A sign erected at the site shows a 19th-century daguerreotype of Lumpkin's Jail and accompanying buildings, as seen from Church Hill. Shockoe Creek flowed next to the jail and would occasionally flood the slave jailer's office, said Jeannie Welliver, project-development manager with the Richmond Department of Economic Development.

Virginia exported up to 350,000 slaves, with Richmond overtaking Alexandria as the busiest port by 1840, according to Philip J. Schwarz, a professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University who is researching the Lumpkin family.

With the Jamestown 2007 celebration in mind, local officials view the site as part of an important historical link that includes the nearby slave burial grounds, the Slave Trail along the James River and Manchester Docks and a Reconciliation Statue that will be erected at 15th and Main streets. The monument will commemorate the slave-trade link between Richmond, Liverpool, England, and Benin, West Africa.

What turns up during this week's dig will determine whether further work is done at the site, Laird said.

Lumpkin owned three 30-foot-wide lots at the site, which fronted a narrow alley that extended 15th Street to Broad Street. Although the jail came to bear his name, it predated Lumpkin. "He kind of just walked in and took over. Even though it was Lumpkin's Jail, we're pretty sure it was already there."

Finding any remnants of the two-story brick building, which was 41-feet long and 21-feet wide, will be a challenge. In the 1890s, Richmond Ironworks was built atop the site. The Seaboard Railroad Depot followed in the early 1900s. "So as you can see, we have many feet of fill material over the Civil War-era site," Laird said.

But onlookers at the site said that whatever slave history is mined will be as valuable to the community as gold.

"I don't think people have any idea what the positive potential of this is," said the Rev. Ben Campbell, pastoral director of Richmond Hill, as the backhoe shoveled up earth.

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The parking lot that paved over the slave-jail site represents the power of denial over what transpired here, Campbell said. "Touching reality here and bringing this alive may frighten people. But I believe it can be a tremendous source of energy and encouragement."

"If we don't get it right here," McQuinn said, "We won't get it right anywhere in the nation."