New Discoveries at Jamestown: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in AmericaCotter, John L. (John Lambert)
History
New Discoveries at Jamestown: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America
Cotter, John L. (John Lambert)
Jamestown (Va.) -- Antiquities; Jamestown (Va.) -- History; Jamestown (Va.) -- Social life and customs
This Jamestown row house is probably the most impressive foundation on
the island. It is 16 feet long and 20 feet wide (inside measurement),
situated east of the Tercentenary Monument, facing south, well back from
the river and "the back streete." A cellar and a great fireplace
terminate the east end, and 9 other fireplaces are evident in 4 main
divisions, which may have housed one family or more in each division.
Since artifact evidence relates it to the last quarter of the 17th
century, and possibly the beginning of the 18th, there would seem little
possibility of the row house having served as a public building or a
tavern. There is some evidence that at least part of the structure
burned.
Two other foundations might be classed as row houses, but are less
clearly delineated. One is the Last Statehouse Group of five units in
the APVA grounds.[1] The other multiple house is a 3-unit building
midway between the brick church and Orchard Run. This structure
generally fits the description of the First Statehouse in its 3-unit
construction and dimensions, and has long been thought to be the
original Statehouse building. The structure, however, is as close to the
present shoreline as the First Statehouse is recorded to have been in
1642--a puzzling coincidence, if the factor of erosion is taken into
consideration.
[Footnote 1: After the Third Statehouse burned, it was replaced on the
same foundations by the Fourth (and last) Statehouse built on Jamestown
Island, which burned in 1698. The Fifth Statehouse, now reconstructed at
Williamsburg, also burned, continuing an unhappy tradition that includes
the destruction of the National Capitol at Washington in 1814 and the
Virginia Statehouse at Richmond in 1865.]
Single Brick Houses
These were once supposed to have been very common at Jamestown, but are
represented by only 12 foundations, not all of which have been
completely excavated. Like the other excavated structures, if these
houses can be related to the ownership of the land tracts on which they
once stood, we may someday know more of their possible identity.
Frame Houses
Partial or even whole brick footings do not always indicate brick houses
at Jamestown. Some 30 structures have been recorded which had brick
footings or isolated brick fireplace foundations, the appearance of
which suggests frame houses. These may be briefly classified as follows:
Brick, or brick-and-cobble, wall-footings with central chimney bases
of brick--2.
Brick footing and outside chimney--3.
Brick footing only--10.
Brick chimney base alone remaining--12.
Stone footing only--1.
Cellar only, presumed to belong to frame or unfinished house, or to
have had all bricks salvaged--1.
Burned earth floor area only remaining, presumed to mark a frame
house--1.
Some of the structures encountered in the first explorations remain to
be more fully excavated and recorded. Structures in this category total
23.
Miscellaneous Structures
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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