William Drummond, a Scotsman, merchant, and planter, was a member of the seventeenth-century colonial Virginia elite. He is best known as the first governor of Albemarle County in the Province of Carolina and as a significant participant in Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677). After accumulating considerable wealth and status following his arrival in Virginia in the late 1630s, Drummond acquired a leasehold in the Governor’s Land in 1648 and a lot in Jamestown sometime after 1656. In 1662, his wife, Sarah, patented an inherited lot in Jamestown. The Drummonds eventually constructed one of the town’s earliest brick residences. During the 1660s, while serving as Carolina’s first governor, Drummond also acquired additional large tracts of land in James City, Charles City, and Westmoreland counties.
During the 1660s and 1670s, Drummond increasingly clashed with members of Virginia’s ruling elite. He was involved in lawsuits with merchants in England, Scotland, and Massachusetts, as well as disputes with mariners. He was also brought before the General Court at Jamestown and ordered to complete construction of a fort he had begun building on an island in 1672 and to replace defective brickwork. Drummond ultimately supported Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion. When Bacon’s forces set fire to Jamestown in September 1676, Drummond burned his own house. He is also credited with saving the county’s records from destruction. Captured by forces loyal to Governor William Berkeley, Drummond was hanged in January 1677.
Despite his execution and the seizure of his property, the family continued to occupy the 235-acre Governor’s Land parcel. Drummond had secured an extended 99-year lease in 1671, which would have expired in 1770.
The property’s later eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century occupation is less well documented. Cartographic evidence, however, identifies an “M. Harris” as the property owner in 1781, when French cartographer Desandrouins mapped the area associated with the Battle of Green Spring. Interestingly, the boundaries of the 235 acres patented by Sarah Drummond in 1683, as depicted on a contemporary map, remained identifiable into the late twentieth century. Red sandstone markers once delineated the property’s perimeter, and one late eighteenth-century boundary marker survives in situ. The eastern boundary also follows the distinctive curve of modern Greensprings Road, preserving the alignment of the seventeenth-century property line.
