The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624Hatch, Charles E., Jr.
History
The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624
Hatch, Charles E., Jr.
Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
It was in 1621 that the Company undertook to establish and build the
East India School and to locate this "free schoole in Virginia" at
Charles City. A grant of 1,000 acres was set aside and a few workmen
were sent to the Colony. For a time it looked as if this center to
encourage the "rudiments of learning" and "principles of Religion,
civility of life, and humane learning" would materialize. It did not,
however, survive the massacre. When the workmen reached Virginia, they
were placed among the College tenants and later transferred to Martin's
Hundred.
The massacre of 1622 appeared to have been devastating in the Bermuda
area and led to its temporary abandonment. The list of those killed is,
however, rather light in comparison with settlements such as Martin's
Hundred. There were twenty-seven at four specified points. It leads one
to doubt that a full list of names was submitted.
Thought soon turned to a repair of the damages. It was judged "very
necessarie to raise new workes especiallie at Henrico & Charles Citty"
which according to one report were "utterlie demolished by the Indians."
This destruction, at least some of it, followed the abandonment of the
posts. Houses were burned and "poultry, hoggs, cowes, goates, and
horses" were killed in number "to the greate griefe as well as ruine of
the olde inhabitants...."
There was a return to the land in some large measure after the massacre.
In 1624 a list of 41 residents was given for "the Neck of Land" in
Charles City Corporation and the census of 1625 showed 44 in this old
Bermuda Hundred area. In 1624 Luke Boys and Thomas Harris sat in the
Assembly at Jamestown and may have helped to enact the measure that
required "courtes [to be] kept once a moneth in the Corporations of
Charles Cittie & Elizabeth Cittie" to handle cases involving petty
offenses and sums up to 100 pounds of tobacco. The muster of January 24,
1625 shows the "Neck-of-Land" to have been very well established. Its 44
people had 16 houses and good supplies of corn, fish, livestock, poultry
and arms. In May, 1625, ten individual grants (ranging from 50 to 1,150
acres and totaling 2,900) were listed as located here in addition to the
corporation and common land.
PIERCEY'S PLANTATION (20)
At the time of the massacre Abraham Piercey had a plantation adjacent to
the Appomattox River and, perhaps, somewhat upstream from the James.
Here "at Master Abraham Pierse his plantation some five miles off the
Colledge people" four persons, 3 men and a boy were killed. Piercey, a
prominent merchant, named to the Council in 1624, may have laid out his
acres here, "in lieu of his Long service done the Company," as early as
1620. The holding, in May, 1625, was defined as 1,150 acres obtained by
patent. A place name here "Peircies Toyle" Creek very likely is a result
of his activity in this area.
JORDAN'S JOURNEY (21)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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