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Historical Facts concerning Jamestown Settlers

Davries, Captain

" While trading in the West Indies in 1633, stated that he had made the acquainted of Captain Stone at Jamestown, who had recently arrived from that part of America, presumably with a cargo of supplies to be bartered for tobacco. Source: Devries' Voyages from Holland to America, pp. 51, 52.

Sandys, George

. Jamestown. After the massacre of 1622, George Sandys wrote a member of the Council (in 1623) that the only advantage which resulted from the massacre was that it compelled the planters to draw into narrower limits and to live more closely together. Source: Hening's Statutes, vol. I, p. 291.

Harrison

. One afternoon, while en route to Jamestown, a duel occurred between Richard Stephens and George Harrison. Stephens received a cut on the knee from the sword of his opponent and died from it two weeks later. The autopsy revealed that he could not have lived long even if he had come off uninjured in the duel with Harrison. Source: Letter of George Menefie to John Harrison in England, April 27, 1624, British Colonial Papers, Vol. III, 1624-5, No. 15.

Hone, Theophilu

. Jamestown. By contract with The Colonial Government, Theophilus Hone, Mathew Page, and William Drummond agreed to raise a fort at Jamestown, to have a frontage of brick extending at least 150 feet. After some delay, this fort was built. When Clayton visited the Colony, he found that the structure had been erected in the shape of a half-moon. Source: Records of General Court, p. 149; Clayton's Virginia, pp. 23, 24, Force's Historical Tracts, vol. III.

Sherwood

. William Sherwood was born in the parish of White Chapel, London, and served the Law in the office of Sir Joseph Williamson. As a result of some youthful indiscretions committed against his patron, he came to Virginia in 1668 and served 5 years as a deputy sheriff of Surry County. In 1674 he removed to Jamestown where he practiced law and married Rachel James, widow of Richard James who owned a large part of Jamestown Island and kept an ordinary. He died in 1697 and his widow married (thirdly) Edward Jaquelin. Source: Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, Volume I, by Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1915).

Notes

" As commodities began to reach Virginia in quantities, tools and building supplies became available, and skilled workers arrived. Thus, homes could be more sturdily built. By 1620, Reverend Richard Buck, who had reached Virginia, in 1610, had purchased from William Fairfax the latter's dwelling house located on twelve acres of land in James City. In 1623, William Claiborne was sent to the colony and laid out an area on Jamestown Island known as New Town, where a number of dwellings were erected."

" As the colonists had begun to fashion clapboard and wainscoting by 1609, and were using brick made in the Colony by 1612, the houses, built in this newly laid-out area, were far more substantial than the early shelters described. Among those dwelling in New Town, by 1624 were Richard Stephens, Ralph Hamor, George Menefie, John Chew, Doctor John Pott, Captain John Harvey, and Ensign William Spence."

" In 1624, John Johnson was ordered by the Court to repair the late dwelling house of Spence. References to other houses mentioned are found in the early land patents. Abraham Peirsey, the cape-merchant, directed, in his will dated 1626, that he be buried in his garden, where his new frame house stood. Thomas Dunthorne's house is mentioned, in 1625, and in 1627, Sir[21] George Yeardley noted, in his will of that date, his dwelling house and other houses at Jamestown."

" Richard Kingsmill, who patented land at Archer's Hope, James City, in 1626, planted there a pear orchard, and reported later that he had made from fruit gathered there some forty or fifty butts of perry. In addition to his house at Jamestown, George Menefie maintained a plantation, near Archer's Hope Creek,[23] called "Littletown" where he had orchards of apple, pear, cherry, and peach trees, and a flower garden specially noted for its rosemary, thyme, and marjoram. "

" About 1625, Captain Samuel Mathews moved his seat from the south side of the James River to a location near Blount Point at the mouth of the Warwick River, and across from Mulberry Island, which later was called "Denbigh." He married, a year or two thereafter, the widow of the cape-merchant Abraham Peirsey. A contemporary writer, in 1648, described Mathews' plantation as a miniature village, at the center of which was the manor house. On surrounding acreage, hemp and flax were sown, and upon being harvested, the flax was spun and woven into cloth in one of the many outbuildings. At a tan house, eight shoemakers dressed in leather and made shoes. There were negro servants, some of whom worked in the fields while others were taught trades. Barley and wheat, grown at "Denbigh," were reported to have been sold at four shillings per bushel. Some of the cattle raised on the place supplied the dairy while others, kept for slaughtering, supplied meat for outbound vessels. Mathews also kept swine and poultry. Incidentally, Colonel William Cole acquired "Denbigh" from the Mathews family in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In turn, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, descendants of Cole conveyed the original home site and several hundred acres of the plantation to Richard Young, whose descendants still own a portion of it."

" "Greenspring," Governor Berkeley's home about three miles inland from Jamestown, was built of brick soon after 1642, to which additions were made at different times; recent excavations show that it was ninety-seven feet, five inches in length by twenty-four feet, nine inches in width. The rooms on the ground[24] floor, overhung by a colonnade, were in a single file with an ell on the north front at the west end. Only the foundations of the structure remain. The ever-flowing spring, from which the plantation took its name, is maintained within a brick enclosure."

Source: Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century Jamestown by Annie Lash Jester

Informational

• Special Collections
• Green Spring Plantation of Governor Berkeley
• Popham Colony
• George Menefie
• George Menefie of Littletown
• Nathaniel Causey