Truckin' on the Western Branch

The abandoned colonists knew that the land of the Chesapeake tribe could be reached by boating up Albemarle Sound and the Chowan and portaging over an Indian trail to the James River. If they came up Bennett’s Creek instead of the Blackwater, the schooner is where they might have left it to continue on foot 25 miles north to the headwaters of the Western Branch of the Elizabeth River. Future archaeological discoveries might show that the Lost Colonists were briefly in the Churchland-Western Branch area. If the Roanoke colonists did make it north, they likely assimilated with the Chesapeake Indians and would have been living with them when the English arrived in 1607. And that is where Prophesy and Mystery collide. One of the theories about the demise of the missing Roanoke colonists claims they were massacred or captured when Powhatan’s warriors, including some Nansemonds, attacked the Chesapeake tribes in the spring of 1607 as the Jamestown settlers arrived on the Virginia coast.

William Strachey, Secretary to the Colony in 1609, wrote that King James had been told that although the Roanoke Colonists had lived for “ 20 and od yeares outside his dominions, Powhatan had killed them. In fact, the slaughter at (of) Roanoak had happened at what tyme this our Colony, (under the conduct of Capt. Newport) landed within the Chesapeak Bay. ” King James may have heard this news from John Smith. According to Samuel Purchas, who talked with Smith, when Powhatan held Smith captive the chief admitted to him that he had killed “those at (from) Roanoke.” Colonial Land Grants Captain John Smith overlooking the James. Image by Sheally

In 1607 the Virginia Company of London offered shareholders 100 acres of land for each £12 share as a dividend on investment in founding the colony. They speculated the dividend would rise to 200 acres as the company profited from the colony’s natural resources—hopefully gold. However, the Virginia Company struggled, and by 1624, the rights to the land in Virginia went to the King who established a Royal Colony. The distribution of land reverted to a variety of grants or land patents that were issued (1) as a dividend in return for investments in founding the colony, (2) to reward special service to the colony, (3) to fortify the frontier by using land to induce settlements, (4) to encourage immigration by the headright. By the 1630s three-quarters of the land granted in Virginia was by “headright” grants that awarded fifty acres for every other person the grantee transported. The Jamestown experiment evolved into an English land grab as native tribes vanished under the pressure of headright grant settlers.

Local family names first appear on early land grant maps. Creeks, rivers, and streams, the boundaries for early land holdings, were often identified by family names. The names of Robert Bowers, John Hill, Thomas Meares, Andrew Taylor, Thomas Hodges, John Jolliffe, Abraham Bruse, William Carney, William Wright, Capt. Jno Hatton, Richard Bennett, Thomas Wright, James Knott, and Thomas Burbage all identify local creeks, neighborhoods, and roads.

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