In 1714, through the Virginia Indian Company, Gov. Alexander Spotswood initiated the construction of First Christanna on a bank of the Meherrin River. The fort gave the Indian Company a monopoly on the regional fur trade, intended to ensure fair trade practices with tribes and profits for shareholders. With the cooperation of tribes friendly to the English, it helped defend Virginia’s southern border during a turbulent time, and, at the center of a 36 square-mile tract reserved for the Saponie, Occoneechee, Tottero, and Stukanocks, it also protected those tribes. The tribes built a town downhill from the fort, where Spotswood erected a handsome schoolhouse and provided a salary for the schoolmaster, Rev. Charles Griffin, who taught and lived there. Spotswood aimed to re-educate and indoctrinate Indian children from several tribes in Anglican religion and English, and also to keep the children at the school to secure tribal cooperation with the English. In 1717 the General Assembly withdrew financial support, and Griffin moved to teach at the Indian School at William and Mary. Trade and treaty making continued at the fort, but in 1729 the tribes living at Christanna moved south to live with the Catawba, and the following year the tract was parceled out to wealthy landowners. In 1924, the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Virginia acquired land where the fort had stood, archaeological excavations later identified the fort’s perimeter, and the Brunswick County Board of Supervisors acquired 25 additional acres for the site.