The cradle of the republic : Jamestown and James River

Preface

In giving this book to the public I wish to express my acknowledgments to Philip Alexander Bruce and Alexander Brown for the assistance which they have rendered me through their monumental works, The Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century and The First Republic in America. My sincere thanks are also due to II. B. Smith, of the city of Williamsburg, who aided me very materially in preparing the charts of Jamestown Island and James River, and to Robert Lee Traylor, of Richmond, who placed his library at my service, and aided in correcting the proof-sheets.

Williamsburg, Ya., May 14, 1900.

Lyon G. Tyler.

Contents

Page.

I. Indians Along James Elver, 9

II. The Island of Jamestown, 15

II. The Island Of Jamestown

AM E ST OWN ISLAND lies on the north side of the James

River, abont thirty-two miles from the month, and runs for length the course of the river, which is southeast. It averages two and one-half miles in length, and three-quarters of a mile in breadth. Its area, according to a recent survey, is about seventeen hundred acres, much of which is marsh land. Its soil is very fertile, and produces fine crops of corn and wheat.

It is surrounded on three sides by the James River, and on the^ north side by the Back River, which separates it from the mainland. It is traversed by Pitch and Tar Swamp on its northern part and Passmore Creek on its southern part.

Pitch and Tar Swamp begins near James River on the west end, winds around the church, passes back of the spot where the State House once stood, and, gathering its waters as it goes, empties into Back River. Branches of the swamp penetrate the island in many directions ; but by ditching and draining its upper portion has been saved to cultivation, and now in that quarter smiles a beautiful valley, which was once sombre with the pine and the gum tree.

Passmore Creek, named after Thomas Passmore, a carpenter, who was living on the island in 1623, traverses the lower end of the island. It begins at James River, near three-quarters of a mile below the present church, and, running southeasterly nearly the course of the river, flows into the river at the eastern end of the island, cutting off about one-third of the whole area.

The upper part of the strip of dry land between this creek and the river is known as “Goose Hill/’

The point at the extreme eastern end was known in the land grants as “Black Point.”

The land at the western end of the island rises well above the water, and there the channel of the river passes close to the

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shore. But at the eastern end, the land, though in the interior fairly elevated, falls away on all sides, as it approaches the water. Consequently the river in that quarter is very shallow for some distance out, and the region of water is known as “Goose Island Flats.” It was because the Merrimac drew too much water to cross these Hats that she was blown up by the Confederates in 1862.

A great deal of money has been spent by successive proprietors to drain the numerous swamps in the island. Ditches, dykes and floodgates have been tried, and while much success has attended these efforts, there seems to be a continual tendency for the land to revert to its former condition.

There was in 1607 a little bay at the point where Powhatan creek struck the neck of the island, and near this bay was a landing. The bay was called Sandy Bay, and the landing called Frigate Landing. The island was then a peninsula tacked to the mainland at the Sandy Bay by a narrow isthmus.

In the years that have elapsed since that time great changes in the topography have ensued. The rush of the waters down the river and the swelling of the tides beating against the shores have carried away much of the soil along the mainland, and at the west end of the island.

We are told that in 1676 the connecting isthmus was only ten paces (fifty feet) wide.

Mr. Clayton, who wrote in 1688, makes the neck thirty yards wide, but says it was entirely submerged at the spring tides. In 1748, the people of James City petitioned the General Assembly to compel Eichard Ambler, who kept the ferry at Jamestown Island, to keep up the causeway, which had been erected over the neck of the island. Col. Tarleton, in his Campaigns , states that in 1781 Jamestown Island was “separated from the mainland by a small gut of water, not two feet wide at the reflex of the tide.”

In 1805, Professor L. II. Girardin, in his Amoenitates Graphicae , wrote of the ravages of the waters in the following words :

“This place of original settlement (Jamestown) has undergone a very considerable alteration by the elementary war which the waters and the winds have unceasingly waged against it. Its diminution both on the southern and western side may be easily traced. Many yards of the

The Island of Jamestown.

palisades erected by the first settlers are still to be seen at low tide standing at least 150 or 200 paces from the present shore. The pieces of timber which Avere fixed perpendicularly in the ground, have decayed, until they have become entirely submerged by the gradual advancement of the river upon the land, where the fort originally stood. This fact shows that the land has sustained a great loss on its southern side; on the western the attrition is perhaps still more considerable. This conjecture acquires a high degree of probability from what we see every day still taking place, and from the very narrow slip of land (even this is inundated at the time of high water) now remaining on that side as the only obstacle to the force of the water, whioh threatens soon unless counteracted by labor, to form a new channel through the island, a denomination ichich Jamestoien may shortly assume”

That there was still a slip of land in 1805 connecting the island with the mainland at low tide was doubtless dne to the constant labor of the owners of that part of- the island in repairing the ravages of the water.

When we next read of the island in the Southern Literary Messenger for 1837, we are told that the neck “had long since disappeared, having been washed away by the force of the current and the tides.”

The island had passed the year before into the possession of Colonel Goodrich Durfey, and he, feeling the necessity of better communication with the outside world, constructed a bridge in the water over the submerged neck ; and upon this bridge passed the stage carrying passengers to the wharf at Jamestown, where the steamers received them.

In 1848, Benson J. Lossing visited the place, and found John Coke, father of the late Richard' Coke, senator from Texas, in possession. Dr. Lossing made a sketch of the Sandy Bay from the opposite shore, then “four hundred yards” distant from the island. This view, which is printed in the Field Booh of the Amei'ican Revolution , shows the piles only of the bridge. The bridge itself, erected by Colonel Durfey, had been swept away some months before by a tremendous gale and high tide, which submerged nearly the whole of the island, for three days keeping Mr. Coke and his family, who resided there, close prisoners, and causing them to use for fuel the ornamental trees near the house, in the absence of other material.

In October, 1856, Bishop Meade, in company with Dr. Silas Totten, of William and Mary College, and others, visited the

The Ceadle oe the Republic.

island, then owned by Major William Allen, of Claremont. The mainland and the island were found separated by “a third of a mile( ?) of water.” The only access was by row-boat. The work of destruction had passed nearly a mile from the original connection with the mainland to the lower part of the old settlement, where once stood the public buildings and the church. A large portion of the most beautiful part of the island had been engulfed by the waves. The bank was giving away within one hundred and fifty yards of the old tower to the church.

A year or two after this Major William Allen originated the present causeway across the swamp of the Back River. This was greatly improved in years afterwards by the late Edward E. Barney, who placed a handsome bridge across the Back River. The present road affords a shorter and more convenient route to the island than the old way across the neck.

In 1895, the ladies of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities obtained from Congress an appropriation of ten thousand dollars for protecting the island against the encroachment of the waters. Large stones were placed at the west end against the shore, but the waves laughed at the engineer, scooped out the sand from behind the stones and caused them to fall flat. Since that time the shore has receded some fifteen feet or more, or on the average about three feet a year.

Now how much land has the island lost at the upper end since the voyagers landed in 1607? Of course, no exact reply can be given to such a question. Nevertheless the following considerations may help us in reaching an approximate conclusion :

In 1716, Hon. Philip Ludwell, being disturbed by the claim that the Governor’s Land of three thousand acres belonging to the public took in a part of Greenspring, showed that the shore on the mainland, where the Governor’s Land was situated, for six miles above Jamestown, had lost by the encroachments of the river one hundred acres in the past thirty years.

On April 28, 1900, the author, in company with Mr. H. B. Smith, of Williamsburg, repaired to Jamestown and took some measurements and observations. We found the piles of Colonel Durfev’s old bridge across the neck still standing, with an expanse of water intervening on either side. On most of the neck at low tide the water was not over two feet deep. The distance

The Island of Jamestown.

from shore io shore, taking the line of the piles, is seventeen hundred feet, or nearly one-third of a mile. On the main side we found the bed of the old highway, and large trees growing in the centre. The distance from a tree standing near the neck on the island, along the west shore, to the southeast shore is very nearly fifteen hundred feet. From the latter point retracing our steps to the middle of the first ridge, it is three hundred feet. On the shore at this point are the last relics of the old powder magazine. Along the ridge the existence of scattered brick and an old well

VIEW OF JAMESTOWN FROM SANDY BAY.

[Sketched in 1848, Lossing’s Field Book 0/ the American Revolution , Vol. II., p. 240.]

indicate where the Back Street once ran. From the middle of this ridge to the middle of Pitch and Tar Swamp it is three hundred and sixty-one feet ; from the last point to the top of the second ridge it is three hundred and thirty-nine feet, and from the top of this ridge to the tree near the submerged neck it is five hundred feet.

I have been told by a person who lived on the island as a youth that a cypress tree that now stands two hundred and ninety feet in the water from the shore near the old magazine, was, in 1846,

.20

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on the shore where the water at high tide would scarcely flood. I have also been told that the piles of the old steamboat wharf, built by Col. Durfey near the southwest point above the church, were so near the shore fifty-five years ago that it required only a plank to reach to the pier-head. It must be remembered too that George Percy sa}^s that the channel in 1607 approached so near the shore that the settlers were able to moor their ships to the trees growing on land. On the whole, then, I think the ancient shore above the church probably followed very closely the line indicated by the present channel of the river. On the west the line of the shore made a sharper angle with the channel than now. It extended out perhaps three hundred yards in that quarter over the present shallow ledge of water.

Probably, then, fifty or sixty acres at the upper part of the island have been worn away in the course of two hundred and ninety-three }rears.

The Country Surrounding Jamestown Island.

The portion of the country beyond the neck on the west side of Powhatan Creek was called The Main.

The portion of country on the north side of Back River, between Powhatan Creek and Mill Creek, which enters the Back River from the north at the lower end of the island, was called the Neck of Land.

The country down the river, between Mill Creek and Archer’s Hope Creek, was called Archer s Hope.

On the other side of the river a creek known as Gray’s Creek cut off Swans Point. The early settlements in that region were called the Plantations Across the Water. Here the poet George Sandy s, treasurer of the colony, had a plantation in 1625.

Further up the river on the same side were Four Mile Tree and Pace's Pains.

And down the river nearly opposite to Archer’s Hope wa§ Hog Island.