The foundations of the multi-dwelling structure that stood here match the dimensions called for in legislation passed by the General Assembly in September 1662.
This row rouse was standing by September 1668 when the justices of James City County asked permission to use "one of the Countrie Brick houses" as a prison. A man's pelvis and left leg excavated from an abandoned well just north of "that house where the goale kept," may be gruesome evidence of a drawn-and-quartered lawbreaker.
The two eastern units, badly damaged during Bacon's Rebellion and "lyeing in ruins," were repaired and altered shortly after 1680. George Lee and his wife Sarah occupied a unit at the east end and provided accommodations to committees of the assembly, the General Court, and delegations of Virginia Indians in town on official business. The row was abandoned soon after the capital moved to Williamsburg in 1699.
That the towne to be built shall consist of thirty two houses,
each house to be built with brick, forty foot long, twenty foot wide . . . .
The Town Act of 1662
Comments 0 comments