Governor Yeardley’s Lot 1620’s

George Yeardley arrived in Jamestown in 1610, was appointed captain of the guard, and eventually became lieutenant governor. Knighted and appointed governor of Virginia in 1618, he issued the Great Charter in 1619, establishing the first representative government in Virginia. In 1620, he acquired a seven-and-a-quarter-acre lot extending east from this location. A 1625 muster roll recorded his large household: Yeardley, his wife Lady Temperance Yeardley, their three children, and 24 servants, including three African men and five African women, eight of the first nine Africans documented at Jamestown. The muster also listed 50 cattle, 40 swine, and 11 goats and kids on his lot. In addition to three dwellings, he owned three boats, a barque, four-ton shallop, and skiff. Archaeologists excavated the brick foundations of a structure that may have been Yeardley’s, and scattered building materials along Black River suggest that two additional dwellings, perhaps for servants, stood at the eastern end of his lot.

Virginia · United States