Stranica 72 [72]
FLOWER DE HUNDRED
Fe N Tindall’s “Charter of Virginia’ (a map pre¬
53) 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 As¬
sembly 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]