Oldal 72 [72]
OCR
FLOWER DE HUNDRED Fe N Tindall’s “Charter of Virginia’ (a map pre53) Prey! served in the British Museum), under date of 1608, we find the clear outline of what was to become II Flower de Hundred plantation, with the Indian ! (os village of Wynagh, or Weyanoke, indicated on its A) bold cape-like projection into James River. Here General Grant landed his forces from his pontoon bridge on his way to Petersburg on a then far-off, undreamed-of day. The place was patented by Sir George Yeardley, 1618, and named—as we now know—for his wife’s family, Flowerdew. This fact was early lost sight of. Certainly, by 1671 the name was written Flower de Hundred, and something in the corruption in the spelling has attracted interest and piqued curiosity until now, I imagine, the maiden name of Lady Temperance Flowerdew will never come into its own. She, by the way, later became the wife of Governor West, and moves, a stately figure, in several records of her day and times. In 1619, Flower de Hundred was represented in the first Assembly by Lady Yeardley’s nephew and John Jefferson. The place was sold to Abraham Peirsey in 1624, and the deed, said to be the oldest in North America, mentions the ‘“‘windmill and the messuages. We know from a State paper that the windmill, which gives its name to the Point, was built in 1621, and that it was the first in the country. Now the word “‘messuages”’ includes the idea of a homestead, “‘house, outbuildings, yard, garden, etc.,”’ but these were, no doubt, down by the windmill where, tradition has it, that a brick house was long since burned—so regretful we admit to ourselves that the garden of today is probably not the garden of my lady Iemperance. Peirsey left the plantation to his daughter, Elizabeth Stevens, [43]
