Flowerdew Hundred Plantation

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Flowerdew Hundred plantation dates to 1618 with the patent of 1000 acres on the south side of the James River in Virginia. Sir George Yeardley, the Governor and Captain General of the Virginia Colony, named the property after his wife, Temperance Flowerdew. Their primary residence was in Jamestown when Sir George called the first General Assembly in Jamestown the next year. With a population of about 30, the plantation was economically successful with thousands of pounds of tobacco produced along with corn, fish and livestock. Sir George paid 120 pounds (possibly a hogshead of tobacco) to build the first windmill in British America.

1 History
2 Archaeology
3 Museum
4 Sources
5 Website
6 Links

[edit] History

The plantation survived the 1622 onslaught of Powhatan warriors remaining an active and fortified private plantation unlike many others in the area, such as the Citie of Henricus. The windmill was an English post type and was transferred by deed in the property’s 1624 sale to Abraham Piersey, a Cape Merchant of the Virginia Company of London -- the London Company. Piersey’s Stone House was the first home with a permanent structure of stone in the colony. The Hundred was home to some of the first Africans in Virginia by 1624.

The 1670 map by Augustin Hermann clearly marks Windmill Point jutting into the James River. In 1683 with the passage of the king’s Advancement of Trade Act, Flowerdew Towne was formed down by the river but not very successful within the James River planter economy. Sometime after 1720, a ferry ran from the stretch called Three Mile Reach to the northern bank of the James. An ordinary or tavern was eventually built there for the convenience of the passengers. Part of the old Hundred was owned by a series of family men -- all named Joshua Poythress.

The area was invaded during the 1781 campaign of Gen. Benedict Arnold. He ordered Lt. Col. Simcoe and some Queen’s Rangers to spike the guns near Hood’s fort on the eastern edge of the property and then continued to the capital of Richmond, setting it afire.

The particular plantation was re-formed again through the work of John Vaughn Willcox, a merchant of Petersburg. He married the last Poythress heiress and bought up the surrounding land. They built a new house in 1804 on the high ridge looking over the James with their primary home in nearby Petersburg.

The Civil War came to Flowerdew in June 1864 when the Lieutenant General, Commanding General of the Armies of the United States Ulysses S. Grant orders his men to cross the James River in an effort to flank Gen. Robert E. Lee. In support of the Overland Campaign, the Corps of Engineers find the right spot at Flowerdew and by a remarkable feat of construction build a pontoon bridge in one evening that set a record for a floating bridge. Grant’s Crossing at Flowerdew (or Wilcox Landing as it is also called) held this record until 1945 and WWII. The Army of the Potomac with three corps and a supply train crossed the river in about three days heading for City Point and the Siege of Petersburg. The site of the pontoon bridge was “found” again in 1986 by Eugene Prince and Taft Kiser. Using Prince’s Principle, a simple 35 mm camera, a cypress tree, and an Alexander Gardner photograph taken in 1864, they were able to place the bridge into the modern landscape.

The old Willcox house was torn down in 1955 though a magnolia planted in 1840 still survives. The bald cypress tree that anchored the great pontoon bridge is over 350 years old. In 1978, a commemorative windmill of English post design was built on the farm.

Over the years the name has been spelled as Fleur, Flowerdieu, Flower de and Flourdy Hundred. Other names for the property include Piersey or Peircey’s Hundred, Selden, Hood’s, and Bellevue. It is listed on Virginia’s John Smith Trail, Civil War Lee-Grant Trail, and the National Register of Historic Places.

[edit] Archaeology

The original land grant of 1000 acres is now part of an educational foundation with over 60 archaeological sites. Registered sites include 44PG64 (Stone House excavation); 44PG65 (Fortified Area); 44PG113 (Selden House sites) and multiple trash pits, earthworks, and archaic Woodland sites. Archaeologists James Deetz, Ivor Noël Hume and many others have conducted research on the property since the 1970s.

[edit] Museum

Located in the original 1850 two-room schoolhouse there are four galleries. The John Vaughn Willcox family, Virginia's Gold, History of Grinding Grain, Prehistory, Trans-Atlantic artifacts, and First Colonists are featured among other topics. Also an exhibit mounted for the Smithsonian Institution, Commerce and Conflict: The English in Virginia, 1625 combines artifacts with the encounters between European settlers, Native Americans, and African Americans of the time period.

The address is 1617 Flowerdew Hundred Road, Hopewell, Virginia.

[edit] Sources

Dawson, Henry B., ‘’Battles of the United States’’, (Vol. I. New York. 1858). Deetz, James, ‘’Flowerdew Hundred: the Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation 1619-1864’’. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993). Frassanito, William A., ‘’Grant and Lee, the Virginia Campaigns, 1864-1865’’ (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983). Hatch, Charles E., ‘’The First Seventeen Years: Virginia, 1607-1624’’ (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1957). Huston, James A. "Grant's Crossing of the James" (The Military Engineer. 1953. Vol. XLV, No. 303. P. 18-22). Jester, A., ed., ‘’Adventures of Purse and Person, Virginia 1607-1624/5’’ (Alexandria: Order of First Families of Virginia, 1987). Hume, Ivor Noël, ‘’The Virginia Adventure’’. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf. 1994). Prince, Eugene. "Antiquity" (March, 1988. Vol. 62, No. 234. P. 113-116).