William Drummond, Scotsman, merchant, and planter, was a member of the seventeenth-century colonial Virginia elite and is best known as governor of Albemarle County in the Province of Carolina and as a significant participant in Bacons Rebellion (1676-1677). After successfully accumulating wealth and status following his arrival in Virginia in the late 1630s, he acquired a leasehold in the Governor’s Land in 1648 and a lot in Jamestown after 1656. In 1662, his wife Sarah patented an inherited lot in Jamestown, and eventually, the Drummonds constructed one of the city’s first brick residences. In the 1660s, when Drummond was Carolina’s first governor, he purchased additional large tracts elsewhere in James City, Charles City, and Westmoreland counties.
In the 1660s and 1670s, Drummond clashed with some of Virginia’s ruling elite. He was also involved in lawsuits with merchants in England, Scotland, and Massachusetts and disputes with mariners. He was brought before the General Court at Jamestown and ordered to complete the construction of and replace defective brick in a fort on the island he had begun to build in 1672. Drummond supported the rebel Nathaniel Bacon, and when Bacon set Jamestown ablaze in September 1676, he burned his own house. Nevertheless, he is recognized as having saved the county’s records from fire. Drummond was captured by Governor William Berkeley’s forces and hanged in January 1677. The family continued to live on the 235-acre parcel on the Governor’s Land because Drummond secured an extended 99-year lease in 1671. This arrangement would have expired in 1770.
The late eighteenth-century/early nineteenth-century occupation of the site is poorly documented. Cartographic evidence, however, indicates an “M. Harris” owned the property in 1781 when French cartographer Desandsouins mapped the Battle of Green Spring engagement area. Interestingly, the boundary of the 235 acres owned by Sarah Drummond in 1683, depicted on a map of that date, survived until the late twentieth century because red sandstone boundary markers marked its perimeter. One above-ground stone marker dating to the late eighteenth century survives in situ today. Also, the property’s eastern border lies along modern Greensprings Road, following a distinctive roadway curve, matching the seventeenth-century property line.
From 1977 to 1981, extensive excavations were undertaken by the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology (VRCA) at the Drummond/Harris Site (44JC0043). The site lies along the Great Road, which connected Jamestown to Green Spring, Governor Berkeley’s manor home in the third quarter of the seventeenth century (see map in Appendix A). The historic occupation of the property spanned c.1648-1820 when the Drummond and, later, Harris families lived there. Entirely situated in a plowed field, the site artifact scatter visibly extended over a large area, 300’x 330′. This advantageous situation, not now available due to a change to “no-till” farming methods in the region that do not turn the soil, offered the rare opportunity to accurately position a grid of 95 contiguous 10′ squares across the core of the site for the systematic and careful gathering of plow zone soil samples and artifacts. The artifacts were recovered by screening 9,500 cubic feet of excavated soils through ¼” wire mesh, and they are housed within the 500 archival boxes of Governor’s Land material curated by the Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation.
Significantly, when these investigations were undertaken, plow zone studies were not conducted in the region, showing a preference for the contents of only subsurface deposits. Nevertheless, numerous studies since then have clearly demonstrated the information value of the plow zone. Thus, the plow zone data recovered from the site will be analyzed as part of the project, potentiallyassisting in interpreting subsurface deposits and landscape use of this very complex site. Similar studies in the Chesapeake region, from St. Mary’s City, Maryland, to Jamestown, Virginia, over the past 40+ years will provide comparative data on methods and results.
While evident at the onset from the 170-year artifact date range in the plow zone, the complexity of the site was revealed by mapping an extensive number of subsurface features. These deposits included at least 32 structures, three craft areas, eight wells, one icehouse, nine refuse pits, 16 lengths of fences, seven ditches, a roadway, garden enclosures, and 21 graves (see map in Appendix A). The evolving domestic wooden architecture of the Drummond post-in-ground home eventually led to the construction of a brick footing structure. Outbuildings included quarters for the enslaved. Appendix B shows examples of photographs of site features during excavation. The complex site will be described in detail as part of the project.
This fieldwork generated a wide range of ceramic, glass, metal, and organic artifacts, yielding significant information about material culture and colonial consumer behavior as it evolved over a 170-year period. Over 450 of these artifacts have been drawn, as seen in Appendix C examples. Numerous categories of artifacts remain to be illustrated; additional final drawings will be included as part of this project. All illustrated artifacts will be described in detail as part of this project, with comparative examples from other sites being part of the descriptions. Given the wide range of c. 1648-1820 archaeological deposits and artifacts at the Drummond/Harris Site, other researchers have used information for decades despite the site not being written up. The known uses of the Governor’s Land data for articles, books, exhibits, and lectures exceed 120, as shown in Appendix D, but they have relied on the project directors to provide the information.
Because James City County records were burned in Richmond at the close of the American Civil War, few county sites have useful documentary information dating before 1865. As a result of historical events and chance survivals; however, the Drummond/Harris Site does have significant, relevant written records tied to specific events that took place during the long occupation of this landscape that will be included in the final report. For example, William Drummond sided with the rebels during Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676/1677, and, as a result, he was hanged by Governor William Berkeley. Berkeley forces took over his plantation; subsequently, his widow Sarah filed a petition with King Charles II for restitution. The Drummond estate where he lived (Drummond/Harris Site) with his wife, five children, and nine servants was described in great detail in May 1677. This document lists “servants,” both black and white, as well as crops, livestock, and personal possessions. In this instance, valuable information can be uniquely used to interpret the architecture, the landscape features (and enclosures), and the portable material culture that have been uncovered. Clearly, the plantation was a staging area for the Siege of Jamestown, as excavations revealed fragments of an exploded falcon cannon barrel and Drummond’s personal broadsword, which were deliberately buried to hide the physical evidence of his participation.
Another example occurred over 100 years later; a second significant historical military event happened at the Drummond/Harris Site just before the Battle of Yorktown during the Revolutionary War. On July 6, 1781, the Battle of Green Spring was fought between the Marquis de Lafayette and Lord Cornwallis. Some of the most intense fighting took place across the Harris Plantation, and it was documented on a detailed French map and in numerous eyewitness accounts from American and British soldiers who described the landscape. Archaeologically, it was possible to show where opposing sides stood based on historical cartography and where munitions were dropped and shot. The skeleton of an unknown Patriot soldier was also recovered from the site.
Smithsonian Institution anthropologists determined his remains to be American based on isotopes. This scientifically confirmed Patriot was reburied in a tabletop tomb at the Church on the Main site, a nearby landmark in sight of the Drummond/Harris site in the eighteenth century.
Another resource that will be used in writing the report is the rare surviving Ambler Family Papers that date from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The Amblers were contiguous landowners. Reviewing their land plots and transactions will contribute to and enhance our understanding of landscape changes on the Governor’s Land over time.
The proposed study is designed to be a stand-alone project, the results of which will benefit the understanding of material culture in the Chesapeake Region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It will complement the published report on Governor’s Land sites dating to the first half of the seventeenth century (Outlaw 1990), and will thus provide a two-hundred-year continuum of well documented artifacts used in the Chesapeake region.
Analysis of the collections and the archaeological data will address the following research questions: How was the site used over the 170-year occupation period? How is the material culture reflected in the diversity of people who occupied the site? How are social and economic status displayed in ceramic choices? Will plow zone soil chemistry, artifact distributions, and analysis of artifacts from sub-surface features aid in identifying the locations of former above-surface features, such as doorways, windows, rooms, paths, and activity areas that are not obvious in the subsurface?
Analysis of these data will be crucial to determine chronological evidence for known craft activities, such as a smoking pipe kiln, toy making, and metalworking at a bloomery, which produced artifacts on-site. Virginia-made ceramics dating from c. 1648 until c. 1820 will be used to identify and date features and will be considered with analysis of ceramics from England, New England, and Pennsylvania (see Appendix A map for regional sources). A late 17th-century elite Virginia woman’s ceramic choices will be illustrated in the assemblages acquired by Sarah Drummond after she petitioned the king for restitution of her property seized by Governor Berkeley during Bacon’s Rebellion. Although Drummond’s Governor’s Land heirs were less politically prominent in the eighteenth century, they clearly “kept up with the Jones,” as will be demonstrated in their ceramic choices that include important assemblages of Chinese porcelain tea wares, plates, punch bowls, and matching sets of delftwares, creamware, and pearlware tablewares in the latest fashions.
