Qualla: Flowerdew Hundred Plantation

Flowerdew Hundred Plantation: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steveprutz, CC0. Sir George Yeardley named it after his father-in-law's money, not his affection. When the Governor and Captain General of Virginia patented land on the south side of the James River in 1618, he called it Flowerdew Hundred after Anthony Flowerdew, the wealthy Norfolk gentleman whose daughter Temperance had married him. A "hundred" was an old English division of a county, and this one would prove tougher than most. While neighboring settlements like Henricus and Martin's Hundred were abandoned after the devastating Indian massacre of 1622, Flowerdew survived with only six deaths, its residents fortified and defiant on the riverbank. With about 30 people producing thousands of pounds of tobacco alongside corn, fish, and livestock, the plantation was an economic engine of early colonial Virginia - and home to the first windmill ever erected in British America, built by 1621.

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Flowerdew Hundred Plantation: Firsts Along the James

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steveprutz, CC0. Flowerdew Hundred accumulated firsts the way other plantations accumulated debts. The English post mill that rose on its grounds by 1621 was the first windmill in English North America, its wooden sails catching the river breeze to grind grain. When Abraham Piersey, Cape Merchant...

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Flowerdew Hundred Plantation: Shelled, Burned, and Rebuilt

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steveprutz, CC0. The plantation passed through the Poythress family for generations, each heir seemingly named Joshua. In 1781, Benedict Arnold's campaign brought violence to Flowerdew when he ordered Lieutenant Colonel Simcoe and Queen's Rangers to spike the guns near Hood's fort on the property...

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Flowerdew Hundred Plantation: The Longest Bridge

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steveprutz, CC0. In June 1864, Ulysses S. Grant needed to outflank Robert E. Lee and capture Petersburg's vital rail hub. His solution was audacious: order the Corps of Engineers to throw a pontoon bridge across the James River at Flowerdew, then known as Wilcox Landing. In a single evening, the ...

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Flowerdew Hundred Plantation: Buried and Unearthed

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steveprutz, CC0. Beneath the plantation's 1,000-acre land grant lie more than 60 archaeological sites spanning from archaic Native American encampments to twentieth-century homesteads. Archaeological investigations began in the late 1960s and continued through 1995, when James Deetz led the final...

Image: Steveprutz | CC0