Oldal 68 [68]
WEYANOKE
HE estate of Weyanoke, the name of which was
borrowed from the Indians, lies on the north shore
of James River and is mentioned in history as early
as 1607. When John Smith and Christopher New¬
port made their adventurous voyage up the James,
they found seated here the Weyanoke Indians.
This tribe, though in reality under Powhatan, was nominally
governed by a queen to whom the early colonists often referred as
the “Queen of the Wayanokes.’”’ Unfortunately, no other name
seems to have been bestowed upon her.
When Sir George Yeardley was Governor of the Colony of
Virginia, he acquired an estate at this point, but this he sold later
to Abraham Piersey. Towards the end of the seventeenth century,
the place passed into the possession of the Harwood family.
Though there had been an earlier house on the property, in 1740
William Harwood built the present large frame house at Weyanoke.
Some years later the estate was inherited by the daughter of
Samuel Harwood, who married Fielding Lewis of Warner Hall,
Gloucester County, Virginia. The portrait of the latter now hangs
in the Virginia State Library as that of an early scientific planter.
Through the marriage of a daughter to Robert Douthat that part
of the plantation known as Lower Weyanoke became the property
of the family who own it today.
In 1854, Mary Willis Marshall, granddaughter of the Chief
Justice, a slip of a girl, came to Upper Weyanoke as the bride of
Fielding Lewis Douthat and there began with her husband’s assist¬
ance the making of a garden.
Near by is Lower Weyanoke, where the mother-in-law lived and
where flourished what was said to be one of the most beautiful
gardens in Virginia. The mistress of the older place gladly gave
to her young daughter and son from her overflowing garden all
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